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BE Schoolwear was launched in 2015 as the schoolwear specific division of family business Border Embroideries. With 28 years of experience supplying schools and clubs across the UK and beyond, Border Embroideries have become one of the UK's leading specialist school uniform suppliers.
With a purpose built factory based in Greenlaw, Scottish Borders as well as 6 retail shops based across Scotland, BE Schoolwear cater for all your school uniform needs, while 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 Schoolwear click here.
Border Embroideries was founded by Billy and Shirley Anne Smillie 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 central Dundee in which we will be moving to from Commercial Street. Finally, we launched BE Bonita, our new range of Spanish girls dresses available in store and online.