Briman Voice
COVER STORY The Umbrella Company has weathered the storms of the past few years by evolving
Q. What’s the history of The Umbrella Company? We started out on April fool’s day 2000 (no jokes please) and lasting nearly 22 years in the industry we have seen a number of different challenges from the credit crunch in the noughties to the dreaded C word (Covid) in the last couple of years. A big change from when we started has been the switch to items being sold online more than ever before. As UK manufacturers we have over the years managed to grow our product range further by adding gazebos, parasols, deck chairs, face masks and snoods to name a few, which has allowed us to adapt through the various seasons. In-house UK manufacturing has played a major role in not only helping us to survive and grow with the difficulties through the years but has also allowed us to develop our range and adapt to the world. Who would think that a UK umbrella manufacturer would eventually manufacture gowns for hospitals during a pandemic along with the seasonal demand for snoods for cold and face protection? Q. What are your best known products? We have over 400 umbrellas in our range, all ranging in quality, prices and colours. Our Spectrum range of umbrellas has been
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popular for a number of years and we now have exclusive agreements with our European partners Fare and Impliva, which in turn allows us to offer more products than we ever have done. Q. Do you manufacture everything in the UK? What are the advantages? Our factory is based in Sheffield which includes an inhouse sewing and printing team and this allows us to offer a large amount of products made in the UK. By offering this service, it allows us to give quicker lead times, smaller quantities (or large if needed) with fewer uncertainties of customs or delivery delays. These have been a common issue for a lot of businesses in the last couple of years, ourselves included). Having full control over our sewing and printing gives us to confidence to take on orders that most couldn’t handle or even gamble on flying in from the Far East, despite the customs issues. Q. How has the business fared during the pandemic? We have been no different to every other supplier in our industry who are trade only suppliers and have found it difficult over the last couple of years. Raw material costs have risen massively. Brexit happened at the beginning of 2021, meaning delays
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at ports for getting raw materials into us and container prices at their height quadrupling in cost to name a few of the many issues we had to deal with during the pandemic. We have been lucky with the products we offer as most businesses were pushed to use outdoor venues with a big emphasis on outdoor eating and drinking. Because of the great British weather our products were more in demand than most others in our industry, which worked in our favour. Q. Have you changed the business in any way to meet these challenges, or seize on new opportunities? We utilised our sewing team by adding to our range of products by producing UK made face masks, snoods and shopper bags, all of which are dye sublimated all over as standard. This during the height of the pandemic helped us massively. The snoods and shopper bags in particular we see becoming much more popular in the coming years. Q. How are things looking going forward into 2022? We have a few ideas up our sleeve which involve UK made umbrellas. All I can say at present is watch this space.
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