Growth Capital: If you can put it on a T-shirt, Clifton Clothing won’t chicken out

When, as custom clothing firm Clifton Clothing does, you allow your customers to let their imagination run wild, the results can be worrying.

“Design-wise it can get weird,” admits co-founder Simon Elliott, pointing out a cycling kit with a cartoon of a man doing unspeakable things to a chicken.

“The customer did draw that himself,” clarifies his brother and co-founder Bruce.

It’s an example of the perils of offering a truly bespoke service — as Simon says, Clifton can do anything “as long as it’s not illegal”.

The firm, however, offers far more than just printing custom t-shirts. It can produce anything from hoodies to rugby shirts, jogging bottoms to jackets, and even onesies, all in whatever colour or style you can think of.

“It truly is totally bespoke,” says Bruce. “Some of the best products we’ve added is when someone has gone ‘can you do this?’. And we’ve gone, ‘Oh yeah, we can.’”

While a lot of their customers are sports teams and small businesses, they are no strangers to dealing with corporate giants, having supplied all the clothing for British Airways staff on promotional duty during the London 2012 Olympics.

Not bad for a company started while Simon, who only graduated in 2010, was still at Exeter University and which was never intended to be a full-time business.

The “lightbulb moment”, he says, came while a student. As a member of the Officers’ Training Corps, he had to buy a platoon hoodie which was “awful quality. If it was hanging on the shelf of Top Shop or Abercrombie, I wouldn’t have given it a second look”.

Realising he could do better himself, he found a supplier and persuaded the OTC, along with Exeter’s netball and squash clubs, to put some orders in.

The garments started gaining in popularity around Exeter and then, as university sporting tournaments helped with word-of-mouth publicity, across the country, and Simon and Bruce started travelling to all corners of the UK to promote the business.

In the first year, they managed to turn over £40,000. But when Simon came to the end of his degree he didn’t know what he wanted to do, only that he didn’t want to be an accountant — which is unfortunately what his degree was in.

Attracted to London by a friend who recommended a job in recruitment with the promise he would make £100,000 in his first year, and with Bruce working as a head chef in Cardiff, they continued working on Clifton in their spare time.

Although he did not quite earn £100,000, Simon says his time as a recruiter did give him “amazing sales experience” and, realising he wanted to work on Clifton full time, he quit his job and Bruce soon followed.

The BA deal was a watershed, says Simon: “We were going along very nicely, the business was growing, but at that moment we realised, ‘Wow, it’s a serious business.’”

All the clothes are produced in China in one factory that works exclusively for them. Simon says they get approached all the time by factories in other Asian countries, “and yes their prices are very cheap but there is a reason for that, simple as that. I’ve seen our factory. I know it’s a very high standard.”

They have had help along the way. The company, based just off Edgware Road, has been supported by the government-backed programme GrowthAccelerator which provides coaching for the brothers on how to grow their firm, and the two are fully paid-up converts.

“We actually had a phone call from someone trying to tell us about GrowthAccelerator, and the first call we thought it was a con,” says Simon. “We thought nothing could be this good. Why would you give us advice and it would be funded by the government?”

In terms of financial backing, however, they have been self-reliant. At the beginning they pulled together £800 to get the company going, more than half of which was spent on registering it, “which would have been nice to know was free if you did it yourself”, Simon says ruefully.

Putting paid to any notions that starting a business is a glamorous affair, Simon admits the first few years saw them eating “a lot of pasta” while accommodation had to be similarly budget.

“The first trade show we went to we ended up sleeping in the marquee,” says Bruce, “and if you’ve ever done that, you’ll know its the most unpleasant experience in the world.”

Clifton Clothing

Founded: 2007

Staff: eight full-time, two part-time

Turnover: £600,000

Business idol: Simon: “Our parents were a great inspiration to us. They ran coffee shops and we worked in them from the age of eight.”