The rag trade runs through George Georgiou's veins like one of the golden threads that his company uses to decorate garments.

Casually dressed George appears laid back. But his razor sharp business brain, combined with an insistence on quality and excellent service, has seen Essential grow from a two-man, 1,000 sq ft operation 11 years ago to a thriving company employing 38 people at its new base in Dunstable.

And while embroidery is still the cornerstone of the business, diversification into digital and screen printing and an in-house procurement service for bespoke garments, headwear and bags has seen a name change from Essential Embroidery Design Ltd to simply Essential, which more accurately reflects the company's offering.

Surprisingly, George's move into garment decoration was all down to the flip of a coin.

He takes up the story: "I was involved in a family business, manufacturing leather belts for major store chains. But when the Spice Girls came on the

scene in the mid-'90s, it had an instant and dramatic effect on fashion overnight."

Setting a trend for high cut tops and low slung trousers, belts were no longer de rigeur. And while the family firm held on to its sole supplier contracts with High Street chains, orders were inevitably reduced.

"We knew we had to find something else," said George whose friends involved in the promotions industry pointed him in the direction of embroidery.

"I was also looking at a McDonald's franchise," he added. "In the end, it boiled down, literally, to the flip of a coin. I think I went with the embroidery because it was the quicker of the two although I was accepted by McDonald's as a franchisee."

George snapped up the assets of a Luton company that was about to go bust and, with absolutely no knowledge of the garment decoration industry, production began from day one. Having grown up in the fashion industry, it was the right direction to go in, he remembers.

"When I walked in, I didn't even know how to switch the machines on. But there was a tiny customer base which allowed me to start working and producing from day one and to basically learn the trade," he said.

"I have worked every machine and in the early days - we joke about it now - one of my Christmas presents was a sleeping bag, because once it got busy, it was a case of working 24 hours and sleeping in the office. It has been very successful, but we have directed it that way. No one taught me. I taught myself how to digitise."

"The first thing was to just learn the trade, then it seemed that things fell together naturally. We went into promotional - doing anything and everything - because it seemed to be the area we naturally fell into. But I could see a real gap in terms of service quality."

Having heard "horror stories" from customers, he became aware that not every company did things his way. "We began to make inroads. We had help in that we met some people who introduced us to people and helped us move along. But all we ever needed was a foot through the door and then to do what we did naturally. We did what we said we'd do and delivered on time or early.

"I had come from the fashion industry, working as a sole supplier to the major stores. If we sent paperwork in wrong, it meant a £100 fine, so we learned quickly," said George.

Promotional was a natural for Essential, with trade and schoolwear becoming big areas in the early days. "We did look at end user clients, but it naturally fell into trade and we were very quickly working to capacity. Our problems were always a case of ‘how do we produce enough?'."

In the early years the company was purely contract. "We had garments sent to us and we just branded them," said George.

From there, the company grew and kept adding machines. Having purchased two machines in the initial buyout, he immediately scrapped one. "There was a 12-head and a 10-head," said George. "They were old machines and I realised that if I was to make it a success, I needed to get the latest equipment. I got rid of one of them initially and I got a six head drop table machine, then got another one in and added them one at a time.

"At the time, a six head was around £36,000 to £37,000. Since then, I have made it a policy to change the machines every five years to ensure that we have got the best on the market."

Initially, the company used Happy machines but after a six month trial, it has now invested in Barudan.

The machines were tested side by side, said George. "The differences are tiny from one machine to the other but we can see it and if we go out and say we are the best we have got to make sure it stacks up."

There were further moves to 3,000 and 7,000sq ft premises as the company grew. "We were starting to be asked for garments as well, so rather than just decoration we were providing the whole service."

He puts the company's success down to quality and service.

"Customers would rather put things through us, where they know it's going to happen, than risk putting it somewhere else," said George.

Print was another area that took off. "Direct to garment print was the easiest solution," added George. "If we look at the Kornit digital machine, we were the first people in Europe to have it. We have machine no.7 worldwide - which shows our commitment to what we are trying to do."

The Kornit was fine, but as a bulk supplier, Essential needed to develop the printing side of the business and began looking at screen print.

"But our problem was space," said George. "I did start looking for other premises to maybe open a separate screen print plant and considered looking for a screen printers to buy. Then these premises came up, so we went for them and at the end of February/beginning of March our screen printer was installed and is now up and running."

Essential had, in fact, been offering the service for two years, via a sub contractor. "But we were never in total control and I am not happy if I don't have total control of what we are producing," said George. "All our existing customers use screen print so we are slowly getting new customers on board. It's an ideal scenario for us because all existing customers will use screen print. And for the new customers who come on board for screen print it gives us the chance to sell embroidery."

Essential has employed a print manager to run the screen printing operation and trained up existing staff to work on the £100k MHM nine colour, 12 station machine.

"The challenge at the moment is that our key customers are buying less," said George. "Our target has been the large bluechip customer. We are very strong within banks, oil companies and telecom companies. But the banks, at the moment, are not buying. I believe it's a temporary situation. The banks, historically, are the type of people who will promote themselves out of problems, but their hands are tied.

"People are being far more careful with their budgets. I still believe it's very temporary. We have got the Olympics coming and for anyone in our industry, that's a major thing.

"I can't believe this country is going to go into the Olympics virtually bankrupt. We have a major problem on our hands at the moment, but I think it is going to be quite short-lived."

Another big area for Essential is bespoke clothing, initially sourced from standard suppliers. Since then, George has started sourcing garments from further afield. "Over the last couple of years we have tested a lot of factories and built up a network of suppliers," said George. "I have looked at different parts of the world - Turkey, China, Bangladesh - and have built up a network of factories that specialise in various areas so that we can put work through and control it. For our customers, we take away a lot of the minefields out there."

Essential has the facility to design garments and is pro-active in going out and offering designs to customers. "Slowly but surely it is becoming a big part of the set up," said George.

Examples of their work include the new T mobile uniforms which were designed by Essential and outsourced. George admits it was hard finding factories that work to his exacting standards.

"We are not going to find factories with our kind of set up in Bangladesh or Turkey. But we will reject things and get things put right before they are put through to our clients. We still play a major role in the quality," said George. "So many of our clients are high profile organisations; we want to make sure we are dealing with factories who have ethical and social responsibility."

Essential is one of only a few companies which still has in house digitisers. He acknowledges it would be cheaper to outsource, but again, it boils down to quality.

"For quality, you have to use some of the older manual systems. It makes a difference," he said.

The company sells itself not on price, but on quality of service. "It's not by accident that we have achieved this. If I do something, I want to do it properly or not at all," said George.

"With screen print, it would have been easy to buy secondhand machinery and set it up on a budget, but we have bought the best on the market - MHM - and it's already proving very popular and very successful within a few weeks. "I'd be shocked if we don't bring in another machine by the end of the year."

For more information call 01582 475801.

Website: www.eed-uk.com

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