Images Magazine November 18

IS DECORATOR PROFILE www.images-magazine.com 38 images NOVEMBER 2018 complete with a dedicated area for Stanley/Stella is next on the cards. Ethical ethos Amidst all the changes one thing has remained constant at Fifth Column throughout – its ethos, with the company remaining resolutely ethical in all it does. Staff members have been paid the London Living Wage since 2013 and zero hours contracts (and the insecurity these can bring) are not permitted. The aim is to treat staff well, and the result is loyal employees that “stick around for a good number of years“, confirms Zsolt. The company now recycles “pretty much“ all the waste it produces and promotes the use of ethical, organic cotton garments. “We try and educate customers, rather than pushing them or trying to convince them,“ Zsolt explains. “The choice is theirs, but for example, if someone comes to us saying, ‘I want to start a clothing brand,‘ – which we hear a lot – we show them a standard T-shirt and compare it to a Stanley/Stella. The price difference might be significant to them, say one pound between the two garments, but the end product has so much more value.“ So what is the key to Fifth Column’s longevity and continued success? Zsolt’s response is immediate and unequivocal: “Transparency. Our prices are on our website. Whoever comes to us, they can have a look at the price list. We get a lot of feedback from customers saying, ‘I like your transparency, because we know what to expect from you guys‘. Customers can also come in to approve their first prints, even if it’s just a simple, one-colour design and they want to make sure that the red is exactly the right Pantone. Some come in to take photos and put something on their social media – a ‘how it‘s made‘ sort of thing,” he adds. It’s remarkable to think that Fifth Column has been operating as a successful screen print and garment decoration shop since the summer of street parties, Union Jack hats and the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. The company has grown and evolved over that time along with the textile screen printing industry, yet equally remarkably, given the ever more competitive market in which it operates, it continues to be driven by the same principles, values and ideals There are three sewing stations in the unit More and more customers are asking for water-based and discharge inks, says Zsolt adopted by the five young punks who started the business more than four decades ago. www.fifthcolumn.co.uk [L-R] Zoltan, Damian and Zsolt completed a management buyout of Fifth Column in 2017