Images_Digital_Edition_September_2019

www.images-magazine.com 46 images SEPTEMBER 2019 IS BRAND PROFILE the year they would be idle.” Since 2014, Trutex has been growing, boosted by investment from the MBO team. “We put the building blocks in place in those early years,” Matthew says. “Since that time, we have grown our business organically on the back of doing a good job and getting our act together in terms of having the right product there at the right time and servicing the market. Putting more working capital into the business gave us a greater amount of core stock that allowed us to service a larger customer base. You have to have enough uniforms to make sure every child has garments on their back by September, but not too much uniform by December.” The Trutex brand The Trutex brand dates back to the 1920s after the company started making school uniforms around 1900. By 1965, it was so popular that Clitheroe Shirtings became Trutex. “The business has always been very focused on good quality,” Matthew says. “The core part of our brand is giving parents good-quality, you to pass it on to your siblings. The industry gets unfairly battered by the press and pressure groups, which think school uniforms are unnecessarily expensive for parents. If kids weren’t wearing uniform, they would want to wear something like a branded shirt, but they wouldn’t want to wear that for multiple years.” Trutex’s main route to market is through retailers across the UK although it sells some product through its ecommerce site Trutex Direct. This solution works for retailers that want to sell online but do not have a transactional website or where there is no nearby retailer. The group also has its own retail business, Clive Mark Schoolwear, with six shops in the West Midlands, which it acquired for financial reasons three years ago – “by necessity rather than design,” says Matthew. Operated at arm’s length, the shops buy from Trutex at wholesale prices and have freedom to source product from elsewhere. “It’s been useful to have the insight into the retail business to understand some of the pressures that a retailer has.” Because uniforms are all about uniformity year after year, Trutex is not in the business of fashion, Matthew notes. But this has not stopped it from picking up on broader trends. “Trutex is not a fast fashion environment but, within the confines of the industry, it has been quite innovative in the way it has brought products to market and grown the business.” One innovation was cotton knitwear as an alternative to “scratchy” acrylic jumpers. “It was less expensive to manufacture and the price point was a bit lower than acrylic and gained a lot of traction in the market in a short amount of time,” Matthew recalls. More recent trends include the move towards slimmer-fit trousers and shirts. “It has to look ‘uniform’ and has to look smart, but we can follow trends to give kids what they feel good in. Almost every customer is going for slim fit now.” Trutex has also seen a rise in demand for blazers in secondary schools. “It’s a cost-effective garment over its lifetime as it protects the child when it’s cold and is hard-wearing.” Recycled materials Trutex is also moving into recycled materials, starting with blazers where the outer fabric is 100% yarn made from consumer products turned into polyes- ter chips. “That has been a very positive development for us, and the schools feel very positive about it,” Matthew notes. While the extra cost of the yarn can be swallowed up in the price of a blazer, long-lasting garments which are not the cheapest to buy, but are best value over time. We have an old-fashioned message: ‘Buy once, buy right’. In school uniforms that is very important. They get worn for 12 to 14 hours a day, day in, day out, so you have to have something that has been constructed – from fabric construction to garment construction – in a much more robust way to ensure they last, like the knees don’t go through.” Consistency year after year is vital, he adds. “With school uniform, you can’t afford to have a button out of place as then it doesn’t look ‘uniform’. If stitches are slightly different, the impact of that is not massive on the high street but, for us, we have to make the same as last year.” He hopes the quality message will reach parents who see uniforms on sale at lower prices in high-street stores. “People get bombarded with very attractive prices of school uniform across the high street, but most of that uniform is not built in the same way as ours is. Our strap line is ‘Made to last schoolwear’. We want “The business has always been very focused on good quality”