With the launch of a new website in 2011, they started approaching luxury brands, and now regularly supply names such as Fortnum and Mason, Daks, The Royal Collection and Netjets, with exclusively designed teddy bears. They also all have their own passport, which children often ask customs officials to stamp when they go on holiday. Their strategy has been to boost sales of their standard range of teddy bear, regarded by many as the quintessential English teddy bear, whilst also focusing on a bespoke business, where they are seeing good growth.Įach bear is handmade from pure mohair, a natural ‘wool’ from the Angora goat, and takes around two hours to make. It has been a long process improving our systems and culture, and we still have long way to go, but we are definitely making progress.” We had become a little ‘set in our ways’. The company had a narrow customer base, relying on a few key major clients, and there had been little investment in sales and new business. “Imports from the Far East had all but wiped out European soft toy manufacturing, but we were still clinging on. “When my sisters and I took on the company in 2011, business was stable but not moving forwards,” says Holmes. With a slowdown in the collectable markets over the last few years, the company has focused on its core product, the one that the brand is most famous for, the classic English mohair teddy bear. Sadly, as Merrythought’s broader range of toy animals and nursery products were no longer price competitive, production ceased. “In the early 1990s the focus was on high quality design, limited edition teddy bears, sold in the UK and US, and the growing Japanese collectors market.” “It was purely down to my father’s foresight in recognising opportunity in the collectable markets that the business survived those challenging years,” says Sarah Holmes. Merrythought suffered too, and scaled down from a peak of 200 staff to around 50. Nevertheless, Merrythought went on to become a leading manufacturer of teddy bears, and other plush toys and animals, until competition from China started to impact in the 1970s, and eventually led to the sad decline of the UK soft toy industry, including most of Merrythought’s competitors. Eighty-seven years later, one of those buildings is still Merrythought’s home today.Ī strong start to business was quickly undermined by the onset of World War 2, when the manufacturing facilities were commandeered to help with the war effort, making items such as bags and gas masks. He set up Merrythought’s initial operations in a former iron foundry building in Ironbridge, Shropshire, later expanding to more than 200 employees across four buildings. The owner of a mohair spinning business, he was looking for ways to diversify his interests into producing an end product from this unique natural fabric. But it was their great-grandfather Gordon Holmes who founded it. Today the company is run by sisters Sarah Holmes, Hannah Holmes and Sophie Harden, who took over the business after the sudden death of their father in 2011.
0 kommentar(er)
