SME Spotlight: Promotional products firm dreams big

Parkers Promotional Products is a supplier of branded items to organisations across the UK. Based in Otley, the company is run by owner Charlie Parker and his team, sourcing products from the UK, Europe and China.

Mr Parker has this year reinvested in the team, extended the Otley premises, launched a new website and sourced a new range of products following a recent visit to China in April. Charlie is planning to break £3m in sales by 2018.

His story began more than 30 years ago when Mr Parker’s father Albert took a job selling personalised items door-to-door.

Mr Parker, by this point having been sacked from six jobs, began sourcing items that his father’s company didn’t stock, and Parkers Promotional Products was born.

Mr Parker said: “Dad was a real Yorkshire thoroughbred, a larger than life character. We were more than father and son, we were friends.”

But it has not been an easy ride for the entrepreneur. The biggest challenge he had ever faced was when he lost his wife Victoria in 1999, the mother of their five children who were then aged between four and 14.

He said the loss, of Victoria, from a brain hemorrhage, was a “bombshell” impacting on all parts of his life, both business and personal.

Loyal clients helped him through this time as a business, including Peter Wilkinson, the internet pioneer, who placed some large orders to help relieve the financial pressures of the business and to allow Mr Parker time to look after his family.

Mr Parker said: “He’s always been a very loyal customer and a benefactor, he’s clearly a genius but underneath his hard nosed business image he has a great big heart!”

“There is no template for what you have to do. You have to make it up as you go along and get stuck in.”

But, prepared to work hard, he said, things did get better.

Exporting is a major source of revenue for the business, particularly in China – but beware of the pitfalls, said Mr Parker.

He himself learned an expensive lesson very early on with the business, after he was swindled out of $60,000 by a con artist in China.

He said: “It was a terrible blow at the time, but I learned a fabulous lesson. I was determined that it would never happen again and I worked very hard to establish fantastic relationships with businesses in China.

” I visit every two years and I am always incredibly impressed with the highly educated and professional people with whom we work. ”

Asked what advice he would give to people starting out in business, he said: “Be prepared to work hard, the rewards are fabulous if you make a success of it but it’s a continual grind – a labour of love.”

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