JK Clothing
The clothing store supplies badged school uniforms for 16 schools in South Tyneside and basic school uniform items for all primary and secondary schools in the region. The business also makes several items in-house, offers a repair and alteration service and sells cards, paper and various crafts products.
When did you start up?
1988
How has your business grown since you first started it?
Initially, when the business started up as a ladies wear shop, it did very well and within a few years, we introduced the school wear department which became hugely successful. However, we then had a period where we were stagnant for a while until about 4 years ago when things started to pick up again and we've been growing stronger and stronger ever since.
Did you have plans for growth when you first began?
I think in your mind you always want to grow and the reason I started in business was to make a long term investment. But sometimes you can be restricted by external factors such as the economic climate at the time.
How has work affected your working life / home life?
I work long hours, usually six days a week, sometimes seven. But all the hard work allows me to keep control of the business and it's very rewarding.
What have been the challenges of growing your own business?
Finding new markets is always the big challenge for us. There are about 60 schools in South Tyneside so expanding and getting into new schools is sometimes testing.
Where do you see yourself in two years time?
The shop where the business currently operates out of has almost reached a saturation point so in a year or two we'll start looking into opening up another store. The internet provides a number of options for us too and these will be fully considered in due course.
A highlight from your experiences?
The six weeks holidays is nearly always a successful period for the company. There's a lot of hard work goes into the planning of it, but it's always the highlight of the year and it reaffirms to me why I'm in business in the first place.
A piece of advice for those thinking about growing their business?Essentially, they must be sure that growing the business is going to benefit them. Then, if this is the case then they should research everything they have to in order to give the business the best possible opportunity to succeed.
