Images_Digital_Edition_April_2019

www.images-magazine.com 44 images APRIL 2019 O ne of Michael Hanreck’s earliest memories is about T-shirts. “I can remember as a four-year-old climbing over boxes of T-shirts in the warehouse,” he recalls. After helping out while still at school and then joining full-time at 22, he is now managing partner of PAG Leisurewear, a supplier of wholesale clothing to retail and the trade, including printers and embroiderers. Michael has been with the firm for 29 years, but the company dates back to 1969 when it was founded by his parents, Richard and Vivienne. It was a very different set-up back then: trading as Print-A-Gift, the company ran concessions in leading department stores selling personalised gift products aimed at tourists, from playing cards to pencils, with gold-foil printing. Transfer printed T-shirts emblazoned with motifs such as ‘I love London‘ were soon added to the product range. However, Richard struggled to find good-quality garments in Britain in the 1970s so looked further afield, to North America. “My father has always valued quality and was looking for a really good-quality T-shirt as they just didn’t do 100% cotton T-shirts in As PAG Leisurewear celebrates its 50th anniversary, Mark Ludmon finds out what sets this London-based distributor apart from its competitors the UK,” Michael explains. Richard came across a clothing company called Hanes – at that time an established American brand that was looking to expand into Europe – and started importing its garments into the UK. With Print-A-Gift now sole UK distributor for Hanes, the business started to change, eventually dropping its retail concessions. “We don’t print or sell gifts anymore so we just shortened it to PAG,” Michael says. “Hanes was very successful for us. T-shirts were very much seen as a supplementary side of the business so this was really a big change.” Sales grew but soon Hanes wanted more, looking to PAG Leisurewear to support its European expansion. “They were very keen for us to remain as distributor so we needed to have reps and get bigger, but we didn’t think that was for us. We gave back our sole distributor rights and took on other brands.” Fine Jersey T-shirts One of the first was another American brand, Anvil, which has supplied T-shirts to the US screen printing market since 1976 and now offers a wide range of activewear including sweatshirts and hoodies as well as V-necks. Seven years Independent Trading Company garments are popular with skaters and surfers in the US PAGwas one of the four original UK distributors for Gildan PAG founder Richard Hanreck [L] with England cricketer Robin Smith at a London trade show in 1989 Small, but perfectly formed DISTRIBUTOR PROFILE