Working with apprentices
It’s been just over a year since our apprentice Terri-Jane Harris left the Elsatex Group (including Clearance Textiles and Victoria London Textiles) to travel the world. Now back from a carefully planned four months round-the-world trip, we caught up with Terri-Jane to find out more about her successful and growing business ‘Terri Towelling’ which supplies hairdressing towels to salons across the UK.
After finishing her studies at MidKent College in Gillingham in 2013, she joined the Elsatex Group as a marketing apprentice. Fresh from college, Terri-Jane brought with her a variety of ideas and new skills, all welcomed by the growing Elsatex team. These included implementing new marketing strategies such as flyers, email campaigns, website development, brand identity. On joining the team Terri-Jane said “While some of my peers stayed on in education, or went to university, I felt training in the work environment would benefit my personality more than further academic learning”.
During her first year at Elsatex Terri-Jane continued to hone her marketing skills and in 2014 entered the prestigious Kent Excellence in Business Awards (KEiBA’S). She entered the Apprentice of the Year category, and was delighted to be selected as one of three finalists to go through to the gala awards evening. Unfortunately she didn’t win the Apprenticeship of the Year award, but her infectious enthusiasm and commitment gained her great recognition within the county.
Hairdressing Towels
With the travelling bug behind her for the time being, Terri-Jane has now taken back the lead at Terri Towelling, a company she set up while working at Elsatex. The company is now growing from strength to strength and is currently selling over 3000 hairdressing towels a month! The majority of sales are from her Ebay on-line store and the future sets to be bright for Terri-Jane. With her confidence growing she is looking to add new ranges to her collection, and also working on ways to expand this niche but successful business.
As a leading supplier of hairdressing towels, the Elsatex Group are still very much part of Terri-Jane’s road to success. We supply Terri Towelling with all its towelling requirements and will continue to develop new products for the hairdressing market. We currently stock a number of colours that are appearing in salons across the UK, including; Hot Pink, Navy, Grey, Beige as well as the bleach proof range of towels.
We love working with Terri-Jane and hope this young entrepreneur continues to gain recognition within her field and look forward to partnering her in projects for many years to come.