A North East pet clothing company has launched a recruitment drive after expanding into a new base.
Franky’s Bowtique was originally set up as a hobby business by Kerry Whitney a few years ago, juggling her love of pet accessories with full time work in hospitality. During the pandemic, however, she was made redundant and put all her efforts into the business. Her partner Stephen Hyde also came on board to ramp up activity, with the pair designing, making and distributing fun pet wear from their Gateshead home.
Their colourful bowties for dogs caught the nation’s attention earlier this year when they created a special blue and yellow bow-tie, donating all profits to pet rescues in Ukraine, as well as charities helping refugees. The couple were rushed off their feet meeting orders for the unique pet garments, with many people around the UK also placing orders for their other colourful badgebows - and the ties also caught the eye of a number of major retailers.
Read more : Sage revenues reach £1.9m
The company is now on the cusp of potentially lucrative deals with large pet businesses, triggering a move into a permanent base at the Design Works in Felling. However, despite their delight at expanding into a factory, Mr Hyde and Ms Whitney say they desperately need to bring in new recruits to help meet demand – but say that finding people with sewing skills has, so far, proved difficult.
An initial 10 jobs are being created at the new factory, but that number could grow if potential deals come to fruition.
Mr Hyde said: “I come from a recruitment background, and we’ve been dealing with a specialist recruitment business, but our problem is that we can’t find the right people, considering the breadth of textile manufacturing that was in the North East. There doesn’t seem to be that pool of people anymore which is such a shame.
“We’re trying to manufacture everything in the UK, while also keeping a low carbon footprint and we’re asking people the basic question ‘can you work a sewing machine?’, and while there used to be a lot of clothing manufacturers in the region a few decades ago, a lot of those workers have now retired and others don’t seem to be following behind them.
“Kerry started the business as a hobby. She couldn’t find anything that matched her dog Franky’s personality so decided to make her own. Then when lockdown came she was laid off, so she could focus 100% on the business – and it exploded in the pandemic, everyone got a dog in lockdown! So everyone wanted to spend money on their dog, whether it was a funny bow-tie or accessorise their dog with a bandana.
“We’ve consistently carried that on to this point and come to the attention of retailers - and we have more than one million followers on social media now - hence why we’re looking to upscale. It has been just the two of us working from home but we need to find good, skilled people to join us at the new base so we can upscale. The only way the business will grow now is to increase the product range, such as collars, leads and harnesses.
“So we need these skilled professionals to help us grow the range and the brand. We’re also just starting communications with USA retailers so that could explode too.”
READ NEXT:
