Employees Celebrate 25 Years in School Uniform

4th July 2013

School Trends will be celebrating its 25th year in providing quality schoolwear to schools coinciding with the UK's first Employee Ownership Day on 4th July.

To help mark these celebrations School Trends is thanking customers for their support by sending out mints with orders packed on the day as well as organising a number of activities including staff dressing up in school uniform. School Trends will also be attending Gripple Ltd's open day 10 4pm to show their support to fellow employee owned companies in the region. School Trends is the market leader in providing decorated school uniform to over 5,000 schools across the UK. School Trends provides high quality garments that are decorated and rigorously tested in the UK to ensure they are hard wearing.  Founded on 1st August 1988 by Richard Jones and Peter Beeby, School Trends values echoed Employee Ownership, the company became employee owned in 2004 and today employs over 120 staff. School Trends offers bespoke products and services to both parents and schools, including low and no admin solutions. The new no school admin solution, 'Direct to Parent' allows parents to place a uniform order online, the uniform is then delivered either to school or to the parents home address. This new service is popular among School Trends schools as it makes school uniform easy to manage. Other services include tailored options where a school can manage the entire school uniform aspect. The School Trends range of services have been developed from schools and parents feedback. Daran Brown, Managing Director of School Trends, said: -We are very pleased to be celebrating our 25th anniversary of providing world class services to the school market in the first year of Employee Ownership Day.  We value our Employee Ownership status. We continue to develop and improve our 'Community Culture', which is centred around our staff being our greatest strength and puts the customer at the heart of the business. We tailor products and create bespoke services for our customers. We ensure all our products are hard wearing and of the highest quality. Employee Ownership Association CEO Iain Hasdell said: -Companies such as School Trends are great examples of the success and engagement that can be achieved in an employee owned environment. I am delighted to work on their behalf to celebrate Employee Ownership Day, and make it easier for other UK companies to follow their lead into employee ownership. And to have their support for our target of 10% of UK GDP to be generated by employee owned business by 2020. With a series of events and activities taking place across the UK and a national conference in London, this inaugural Employee Ownership Day will raise awareness of employee ownership as an economically strong and balanced business model. Benefits of employee ownership proven in Employee Ownership Association research include increased employee health and well-being, increased productivity and innovation. Statistics show: UK employee owned companies have a turnover of around 3% of GDP (over £30 billion) pa. 10% increase in the number of companies converting to employee ownership over the past 12 months. Employee-owners have higher levels of job satisfaction, feel a greater sense of achievement and job security and are more likely to recommend their workplace than employees in non-employee owned businesses. Growth rate of employee owned businesses was 50% higher than the UK economy in 2012.