Sunrise Medical has acquired RGK Wheelchairs Ltd., a manufacturer based in the United Kingdom and known for its custom manual wheelchairs for wheelchair athletes and active everyday users.
RGK’s co-founders, Russel Simms and Greg Eden, were wheelchair basketball fanatics back in 1988, when they started their company.
In a company profile for RGK, Simms, the company’s commercial director, noted that at the time, rigid-frame designs had entered the high-performance manual wheelchair market in Great Britain, but “there was nothing of a really bespoke design available. And our idea was born.”
Bespoke is a common British term meaning an item custom made to its user.
Simms says in the RGK video that the goal of RGK was to build “the world’s finest hand-built wheelchairs,” a task that got its start in Simms’s kitchen.
In a news announcement released by Equistone Partners Europe, one of Sunrise Medical’s owners, Sunrise CEO/President Thomas Rossnagel said, “RGK is a great addition to our family of brands! Personally, I am very excited about the prospect of a united RGK and Sunrise Medical, especially leading up to the Rio 2016 Paralympics.”
The RGK acquisition comes just weeks after Sunrise announced it had acquired Switch-It, manufacturer of alternative driving controls for power wheelchairs.
“After Switch-It in March, RGK is our second acquisition this year, and we continue to be on the look-out for exciting acquisition opportunities in product lines and technology that further add to the strong growth of our core business,” Rossnagel said.
