Who we are

1993

Stu, a qualified massage therapist, reads an article in a massage magazine about ‘corporate massage’ becoming a thing in the USA and immediately resonated with the concept. He reaches out to Charles Carcellar (who first brought corporate massage to Australia), and starts providing massage in the workplace to employees of a large IT firm in Sydney at their on-site gym.

Mid 1990s

Word-of-mouth from these employees leads to others seeking office massages, but at this point workplaces still have employees paying for the service themselves.

Stu takes over a corporate massage contract at AMP, and this was the beginning of Seated Massage providing massage in the workplace as we know it today, where businesses invest in workplace wellbeing and prioritise people and positive workplace culture.

Late 1990s

Lena qualifies as a massage therapist and leaves behind the stressful world of advertising to join forces with Stu. They give themselves six months to see if they can turn their big dreams for their humble massage at work and chair massage services into reality.

The phone literally starts ringing the next day (when you shift your energy, the universe shows up!). We brought on board another therapist to keep up with the demand for our chair massage services, and it kept growing from there.

Within the first year, Seated Massage receives its first interstate enquiry, and is booking corporate clients across Sydney and Melbourne. By nurturing connections and spreading the word about the benefits of corporate massage, many more organisations came on board when they could see the positive impact of massage on workplace wellbeing.

Lena, and then Stu, step away from the daily provision of massage at work and start focusing on expanding Seated Massage’s positive impact, becoming the first nationwide corporate and event massage supplier of roving, table and chair massage services.

2015

Stu and Lena hear about B Corp Certification from someone at their co-working space, who thought it perfectly aligned with the Seated Massage ethos, and begin the lengthy process of reviewing their operations and processes and being assessed by B Lab in the USA.

Seated Massage becomes the first massage service in the world to become a Certified B Corp.

2017

Seated Massage becomes an early adopter of the GoodWell certification, an independent assessment of how transparent and ethical business’ people-practices are. This raises the bar of what it means to have a positive workplace culture and promotes workplace wellbeing within the massage service industry.

2020

As Seated Massage’s nationwide presence grows, Hayley joins the team as Operations Manager – with serendipitous timing as she is able to help Seated Massage navigate the Covid-19 pandemic, and develops Seated Massage’s industry-leading Safe Massage Protocol, setting the benchmark for Covid-safe massage in the workplace.

2023

Chelsea Blundell joins the Seated Massage team as Sales and Administration Officer.

2024

After much deliberation and many years of membership, we decided not to recertify as a B Corp and 1% for the planet contributor. Moving forward, we’ll be utilising the funds paid to and the time we spend on these wonderful organisations for (re)certification and charitable means in a more direct, local and likely massage related way that will also provide work for our fantastic practitioners.

Hayley leaves the business, and Chelsea steps into her role as Operations Manager.