Twenty-seven years of knowing what's worth buying
Utility Design Store
- Founded in 1999.
- Authorised retailer of over 60 curated design brands.
- Every piece an authorised original. No replicas, no grey market.
- Independently owned and operated.
- 7,400 sq ft showroom in Liverpool — the North's largest independent design destination.
- Contract sales department for companies and design professionals.
It started with a coffee shop.
In 1999, Richard Skelton, Dick Mawdsley and Kate Cowie were running Coffee Union on Bold Street - one of Liverpool's first independent coffee shops, at a point when the city was only just beginning to discover what independent retail could look like. Their landlord offered them the empty unit two doors down. They said yes, maxed out their credit cards, decorated it themselves, and opened Utility on 4th November 1999.
The first store sold contemporary jewellery, stationery and design-led homeware - Alessi, early European accessories, things you couldn't find anywhere else in the city. It did well enough that within five years they'd opened a second, larger store: the Utility Home Store, focused on furniture, lighting and home accessories from the European brands that would become the core of what Utility Design is today.
What it became
Utilitydesign.co.uk launched in 2004 - early enough that the domain name was still available and online furniture retail was genuinely novel. We've been building it since then: the product range, the brand relationships, the knowledge that accumulates when you spend two decades selling the same things to people who care about them.
In 2024 we opened a new showroom at The Flint, in The Baltic Triangle, in central Liverpool. It's the best version of what we've always been trying to do: a considered space where you can actually sit in a Vitra Eames Lounge Chair, see how a George Nelson pendant light looks in a room, and talk to someone who knows why the Carl Hansen dining table costs what it costs - and why it's still worth it.
What we believe
We stock over 60 brands. Every one of them is there because we believe in it - because the quality is real, the design is considered, and the piece will still look right in twenty years. We drop brands when that stops being true. We add new ones slowly and considerately. Curation is everything to us.
The name Utility comes from the Utility Furniture programme of wartime Britain - a government scheme to make well-designed, honestly constructed furniture available to everyone. No excess, no waste, nothing without purpose. It's still the right idea. We've applied it to HAY, Vitra, Fritz Hansen, String Furniture, Carl Hansen & Son, Flos, Muuto, Ferm Living, &Tradition and the rest. Different context, same principles.
What independence means in practice
We're independently owned and always have been. That means we answer to our customers and our own judgment - no shareholders, no group buying agreements, no obligation to stock anything we don't believe in.
In practical terms it means this: if you ring us, or open a "live chat", you'll speak to someone who knows the products because they've worked with them for years. If you visit the showroom, nobody will pressure you. If we think something isn't right for your space, we'll say so. We'd rather you made the right decision than the profitable one because we believe in long term relationships with our customers.
The Utility Showroom
Our showroom / store is located at 2 Flint Street, Baltic Triangle, Liverpool L1 0DH - open Monday to Saturday. If you'd like to walk through a project before visiting, call us or send a message either by email or live chat (live chat operated during business hours and located on the bottom right of your screen). We're easy to reach and genuinely happy to help.
If you'd like more information about our showroom, you can visit our dedicated showroom website here.