About Us

Location / Hours / Phone Numbers / Staff / History / Equipment Shop on the Web / Looking for A Special Product

Location
34 Hartford Street
Bedford, MA 01730

Please note, we do not operate a retail store open to the public. All of our deliveries are made by UPS, USPS, or Freight.

Hours
Monday - Friday 9am - 4pm. Eastern Time

Phone Numbers
800-525-7681 toll free
781-275-7681 local
781-275-4094 fax

Staff
Ken Larson, President E-mail to info@equipmentshop.com
Barbara Johnston, General Manager

Equipment Shop’s Beginning
Carrie and Ken were in love. Carrie was studying Occupational Therapy at Tufts and Ken was enrolled in engineering school at Northeastern. After graduation Carrie started work in a progressive therapeutic preschool. Ken worked in his family’s manufacturing and sales business. Like all special education programs for kids at the time, Carrie’s school had a difficult time finding suitable positioning equipment for the classroom. It was common for therapists to make much of their own equipment. No one in the USA was manufacturing pronestanders, cornerseats, or wedges. Carrie was inventive and Ken had access to a complete development shop at the family’s company and could build almost anything. Soon, nights out at the movies gave way to nights spent building equipment for Carrie’s preschool.

“Where’d you get that?” and “Can you make one for me?” Carrie often heard from visiting professionals. “I saw a what-cha-ma-call-it in Switzerland. Do you know where I can find one here?” Ken started researching sources and developed designs for equipment not available in the U.S.

Then, twenty five years ago, they made two big decisions. First, to get married and second, to start a company. Equipment Shop was established to bring affordable equipment to families, schools, and agencies to enhance the development of children with disabilities. Everyone at Equipment Shop is glad to be part of the lives of these special kids.

We search the world over to find appropriate products: solid, simple, and reasonably priced. If we can’t find it we make it. In this catalog you’ll find items from Italy, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Switzerland and Denmark, as well as our own New England-made equipment. We boast the largest inventory of Tripp Trapp chairs, Airex mats and Pezzi Gymnastik balls in the United States. All this, and we still treat our customers with the personal service you’d expect from your own hometown “equipment shop.”

Our offices are still in the little shop on the side street in Bedford, Massachusetts where we started twenty five years ago, and Carrie and Ken are still in love.

Equipment Shop on the Web
Equipment Shop has real offices and warehouses staffed by our own employees. This may seem like an odd statement, but there are more and more businesses appearing on the Web that have only an office in a house with all the rest of the responsibilities of the company done under contract by others. So, just to set the record straight, we are for real.

There is a lot of discussion about the future of “E-tailing” and whether the super-competitive, aggressive E-marketers can survive. We approach web business as an adjunct to our regular catalog sales. We will be here to serve you for a long time. We will answer the phone and talk to you. We will respond to your E-mail or your fax or your letter. We are a real company with employees many of our customers get to know by name. Our pricing is realistic and our service is excellent.

Looking for A Special Product
Lots of people call us to ask if we have a particular product. We do have some products, which for one reason or another, are not listed either on the web or in the catalog. Even if we don’t offer the product you’re looking for we often can tell you where to find it and we’re happy to do so. If there’s something you need, let us know we may have a “link”.