The Branded Items Group (BIG) today is a Multi-Award-Winning family-owned promotional items and branded merchandise focusing on QUALITY, VALUE and SERVICE. Although this sounds a little clichéd, our back story was always to create a modern merchandise business but with a focus
on old fashioned customer service. Why? Well mainly because we used to be the customer,buying from other merchandise companies.
Long before BIG was incorporated, company director Steve Fairhurst owned a small marketing agency (Regenic Ltd) and was regularly asked to source a promotional goods on behalf of clients. However, we became a little disillusioned with the lack of advice and old fashioned customer service we were receiving.
In 2013, Managing Director Steve Fairhurst, began researching the merchandise industry, culminating with the launch of a test business “Branded Magnets” in 2014. This business specialised in selling one narrow range of branded products (magnets). We ran this website for two years, mainly to learn what customers wanted, but also to see how we could complete against much larger
competitors online.
Branded Magnets grew to be one of the UK leading suppliers of promotional magnets in its own right. In January 2017, The Branded Items Group
was incorporated with a focus. on providing a wider range of promotional goods. During 2017, we set up a supply chain with over 50 factories in the UK and Europe. Allowing us to offer customers a huge range of products, in fact
over 30,000 promotional items Louise Fairhurst (Steve’s wife) also joined
the company to help drive the initial growth
Our Customer Focus
Actually Talk To customers, (when they wanted us to), ask them about their business and be more consultative. Go the extra mile, give the customers ideas and work as a partner. OK… not rocket science, but simple things often get forgotten. The above mantra was to become our mission
In 2018, the business continued to grow, and we were Short-listed for our first business award and became involved in professional sports sponsorship. In 2019, our company won North West Family Business of the Year, an achievement we were really proud of in just our third year of trading. This was followed up by St Helens Small Business of the Year.
In 2019 we were also chosen by Liverpool city region’s local enterprise Partnership as a high growth business case study, representing St Helens. During COVID Crisis, the company was recognised with UK Business Hero status from the Countess of Wessex for work done
with the local community. The company was further
recognised with a Business Diversification Award in November 2021,
after adapting products ranges in response to the crisis.
Today, the business has BIG growth plans, with the launch of two new websites and dedicated ECO brand. The business services customers
and brands all over the UK and as far a field as Germany, Ireland and
Scandinavia. Leading UK brands and institutions like the NHS and
MOD have chosen to work with us and we hope you will too.
