The Swansea company that began life trading from a market stall is investing £3.2m to purchase 157,000 sq ft of warehousing units and offices at Morriston, Swansea
Giftware designer and importer Something Different Wholesale is purchasing the 61,000 sq ft Building H it currently leases on Swansea Enterprise Park, and also purchasing the adjacent buildings, totalling a further 96,000 sq ft. It will spend about £1m renovating and remodelling the units to suit its growing business.
Founder and MD Jane Wallace-Jones has grown the business since it was established 25 years ago and the company now designs its own ranges of giftware items, which are manufactured in China, Indonesia, India and the UK and supplied to retailers, both online and bricks and mortar, across the UK, Europe and around the world.
Jane says: ‘We have seen our sales double over the past 12 months and that is thanks to our hardworking, dedicated team headed up by commercial director Anthony David and myself.
‘We are all very excited to see the company expanding thanks to the loyalty of our wonderful customers. We have hundreds of new products arriving in the next few weeks so we will be very glad of the extra space! We hope to increase our workforce from the current 80 people to more than 120 in the next three years. We are investing heavily to automate the way we run our warehouse, including £130,000 in a new computerised customer service system – and a digital robot to automate repetitive tasks.
‘Our focus is to push our company in a much more environmentally-friendly direction in everything it does, and as a start that includes installing solar electricity panels on the roofs of the three warehouse units.’
Something Different is currently on the Welsh Government’s Accelerated Growth programme which supports high-growth businesses. Jane Wallace-Jones said that the Welsh Government’s support has been instrumental in the growth of the company.
somethingdifferentwholesale.co.uk
