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DECEMBER
2016
www.images-magazine.comDECORATOR PROFILE
IS
four account managers have just been hired
to help expand it further. The introduction last
year of the 5p bag charge further boosted
business, confirms Arnika Bhupal, who works
in BIDBI’s sales and marketing department,
with the company seeing a big increase in
enquiries and orders.
Fairtrade
Right from the start, it has been important
for the company to offer only Fairtrade bags.
According to Arnika, one of the factories
in India employs women who have been in
abusive relationships, and it is helping them to
develop skills as well as providing them with
fairly paid work. “It’s very important for us to
be ethical in the way that we make things and
to make sure our factories are paying their
workers properly.”
Designer Richard Robinson adds: “We have
used our partner factories in India since the
beginning, initially just buying the blank stock
Bags of potential
BIDBI has come along way from when the founder used to print bags in the back of a lingerie shop, with 25 staff
and a flourishing bag manufacturing business running alongside its decoration arm
I
t’s a unexpected leap, moving from a linge-
rie shop owner to a bag printer and manu-
facturer, but it’s precisely the route followed
by Julia Gash, the founder of Bag It Don’t
Bin It (aka BIDBI). It’s also, when you dig a bit
further, not nearly as much of an unexpected
career change as one might imagine. Julia’s
father was a printer, she studied art and print
making at Central Saint Martins (college), and
while running the lingerie shop she printed
the business’s bags in the back, as well as one-
off T-shirts.
A natural entrepreneur with a strong creative
streak, Julia quickly realised that there was an
emerging market for printed cotton bags and
set up BIDBI in 2008. She started off in her
garage in Sheffield with one member of staff,
buying blank stock from Fairtrade-accredited
factories in India. Shortly after, BIDBI, now
with three members of staff, moved to its
first proper premises complete with a manual
four-head carousel and a small second-hand
tunnel dryer.
Within three years the stock had taken over
the ground and first floor and it was time to
move on again, into the company’s present
premises in Rutland Road, Sheffield, and into
automated printing with the purchase of an
eight-head M&R Diamondback screen printing
press (along with a six-head manual M&R
Chameleon carousel).
BIDBI is still growing at a fair old rate, and
Julia (centre, with red striped top) with the staff at
BIDBI
The M&R Diamondback in action
from them, and then developing a complete
made-to-measure service where we work with
our clients to make bags, or any other cot-
ton product, from scratch. We are very strict
BIDBI supplies only Fairtrade bags