Creative Apparel’s TV debut on Young Apprentice

A FAST-growing leisurewear supplier made its small-screen debut on the BBC’s Young Apprentice, rounding off a strong year of growth.

Stockport-based Creative Apparel, provides high quality screen- printing, embroidery and transfers on a wide range of clothing from T-shirts and hoodies to work shirts and blouses.

It has picked up a host a new contracts this year – including £400,000 for the Olympic Games – and launched a consumer website.
 
Managing director Phil Millar said: “2012 continues to be a great year for us. We have developed and launched a new website which offers 78,000 different items of leisurewear. We now offer more leisure items online than M&S, ASOS, and Next combined and we are seeing the impact on sales already.

“We have secured a number of new contracts and featuring on the Young Apprentice exposed us to a huge new audience.”

Creative Apparel, which also offers computer designing, labelling and branding services, sealed a six-figure cash injection from Barclays this year, which has helped sales grow 30%.

Trish Conroy, senior Barclays business manager said, “It’s been very rewarding working with the Creative Apparel management team and seeing them diversify and develop their offering in the challenging current environment.  With £1 in every £10 now spent online, the development of the new website has proved to be a catalyst for business growth.

“We’ve been able to assist them with restructuring their finance, re-focusing their future growth plans, and providing specialist advice to weather the storm and this is now starting to bear fruit.”