25 years in business!
Cast your minds back to 1993, when Bill Clinton was President of the US, John Major was going ‘back to basics’, we were still in the grip of a recession and unemployment had reached 3,000,000. Not a good time to start up in business you might say.
It was also the year when, just like me, the Queen opened her doors to the public!
The boat race that year was a chance for Oxford to level the series at 69 wins all. But Cambridge adopted the new clever blades. They led from the start and Oxford could never claw their way back. I watched the race from The Terrace near my new clinic.
Being frustrated with the red tape of the NHS, whilst driving through Barnes in January 1993, I commented to my husband that I would love to run my own clinic and that the perfect place to set up would be Barnes. The very next month I was reading through my professional journal and was astonished to find an advertisement for a clinic for sale in Elm Bank Gardens and so The Barnes Physiotherapy and Sports Clinic was born.
My first clinic was a tiny box like building behind River House. My parents helped me paint it and my long suffering husband babysat our small son whilst I did as many clinics as I could fit in around him. The clinic steadily grew in clients and staff until 2005 when I realised we needed to move. The size of the premises would only allow space for Physiotherapy and I wanted to offer other things that would give a more complete service for the community in Barnes.
Eventually I found The Old Ticket Office at Barnes Bridge station which was open plan and could be designed to fit my exact needs. The move was a good opportunity to rebrand as Physio on the River.
At last I had the room to offer Pilates and Yoga classes that work so well with Physiotherapy as a way to help people keep supple and strong. We also introduced Sports Massage and Podiatry. Some of my growing team of Physios were trained in Acupuncture for the relief of pain and our specialist Ergonomics Physio could offer workstation assessments for home and office workers. More recently we added Personal training to round off our integrated service for the treatment of aches and pains and sports injury management. A staff of one has grown to 26!
So on March 19th 2018 I celebrated 25 years in business! We still love helping the local community of Barnes and the surrounding area get fit and stay fit through treatment and health education.
In fact we are still developing our services. This year we have opened our Running Clinic, Bike Fitting Service for cyclists and Shockwave therapy for persistent tendon problems.
I have a wonderfully loyal clientele, some of whom I’ve known for all 25 of those years! I’d like to take the opportunity to thank those people whose word of mouth recommendations have helped my business to flourish. Thanks also go to my fantastic team of staff. With their wonderful expertise they are the backbone of the clinic.
