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With 28 years of experience supplying schools, businesses and clubs across the UK and beyond, BE Uniforms have become one of the UK's leading specialist uniform suppliers.
With a purpose built factory based in the Scottish Borders, as well as 10 retail shops across Scotland and the North of England, we cater for all your school uniform needs whilst still maintaining the personal yet professional service you would expect from a family business.
To find out more about the service packages we can offer your school please click here, or to register your school with BE Uniforms click here.
BE Uniforms, formerly known as Border Embroideries, was founded by Billy and Shirley Anne Smillie in 1989 using a single head embroidery machine purchased with the help of the Prince's Trust.
With business booming thanks to Scotland winning the rugby Grand Slam, a bigger machines and larger premises were needed. These were found in an old workshop in Greenlaw belonging to Billy's father Archie in which BE intoduced 3 new multihead machines to cope with demand.
Business continued to grow and in the year 2000 the first purpose built shed at our current location was erected and a further 3 multi head machines were added. With this the workforce also continued to grow.
Not content with supplying direct to schools and clubs, Billy moved into retail with the opening of our first store in Glasgow through a National Schoolwear Franchise.
With continued growth the factory was extended for the first time providing a larger office and dispatch area. At roughly the same time the franchise became available in Wishaw so BE took on a second store. Billy and Shirley Anne's eldest daughter Aynsley joined the business and now can be found managing the school accounts in the office.
With the end of National Schoolwear, the shops took on a Trutex licence to sell Trutex products under the Trutex name. With this change became came full control over our shops and the opening of the Falkirk store. William, the middle child of Billy and Shirley Anne, came into the business, he can now be found answering sportswear enquiries and making sure things are running smoothly.
An opportunity arose to take over the Ayr Schoolwear Centre and Billy decided to do this. In the process it was rebranded to Trutex Schoolwear in line with our other stores. Ross, the third child, swapped a place in 6th year to become the IT and systems specialist.
A further extension was needed at Greenlaw to cope with the huge volume of stock needed to supply the demand of our new schools and a new 360sq/ft warehouse was built.
With a rise in the number of schools looking for PE kit as well as a lot of new clubs, our first Teamwear and Workwear store was opened in Wishaw next to our current schoolwear shop.
A further warehouse was added to the factory in May 2015 to cope with the huge amount of stock held to fulfil orders. This is also to help supply demand to our shops and online.
Late in 2015 The Schoolwear Shop in Dundee became available and the purchase was made making it the 6th store. To bring all this together, Border Embroideries rebranded the web and shops to BE Schoolwear to show our focus on supplying high quality school uniform at competitive prices with a great service.
In March 2017 we acquired the Fife Schoolwear & Uniforms shop in Kirkcaldy, making this our 6th BE Schoolwear store.
With the increase in demand for our web services we launched our new state of the art responsive website. By offering a far wider range of school products on our new easy to use website we are hoping to supply uniforms to parents not just in the UK but across Europe. We also secured a new location in Dundee which seen the move from Commercial Street to a bigger, more central store.
In 2020 we rebranded from Border Embroideries to BE Uniforms. We're still the same company but have now combined the 3 sub brands - schoolwear, workwear and teamwear - as a testament to our 30 years in business providing uniforms across the UK.
In late 2020 all stores underwent a transformation and now proudly display the new brand name above every door. The rebrand also opened us up to focus more on the workwear and teamwear markets. So now as well as our extensive range of school uniform, you’ll now find an unrivalled selection of workwear and teamwear in store, from industry leading brands such as Helly Hansen, Mascot, Snickers, Portwest, Canterbury, Adidas, Joma and Kappa.
In March 2021, Billy took a step back from the business and son’s Ross and William took over as the Managing Directors of BE Uniforms.
"This is a very proud moment for Shirley-Anne and myself as it has always been our wish that the children will take on the mantle of the business and hopefully progress it to the next level." - Billy Smillie
Ross and William's take over has injected some new ideas into the business, allowing BE Uniforms to drive on further, with Billy not too far away now acting as Chairman. Daughter Aynsley is also still actively involved in the business, although as of August 2021 she is on maternity leave after having her third child.
The pandemic didn't slow us down and we were extremely fortunate to have seen a huge growth in online sales. As businesses began to open back up again, 2021 seen us open 3 new retail stores - the first in Edinburgh, which opened in May 2021. The Edinburgh store, located on Dundee St. now stocks over 20 local school's uniform plus our wide range of plain schoolwear, workwear and teamwear.
In June 2021 we acquired The Uniform Shop on West Tower Street in Carlisle - our first store over the border! We rebranded the store to BE Uniforms and then reopned, offering the same great services as our other stores, plus many local schools uniforms.
Lastly, we also opened our first concession within Planet Sports & Trophies on Great Lime Road, Newcastle. This acts as a face-to-face service for our local customers, a Click & Collect point plus a drop off location for any online returns. They can also see sizing sets for schoolwear before they place an order online.
As of April 2022, we're now offering a FREE Click & Collect service for all online orders. At checkout, you can now select the Click & Collect shipping method and opt to collect from any of our 10 locations, FREE of charge. After successfully trialing this in 2 of our stores, we're pleased to now offer service to all customers shopping online with us.
So far 2022 has also seen a huge change in staffing at BE Uniforms. We have 8 full time salesmen/women out on the road visiting schools, businesses and liaising with clubs. The staff numbers at our head office and factory have also increased with the growth of the business. We now have more sales assistants than ever before in our offices to deal with any enquiries, plus more warehouse staff and embroidery machine operators to help meet demand in the busy summer months.