Celtic Sheepskin announces private equity investment

I hope you don’t mind a bit of trumpet-blowing!

You might have seen the piece in The Sunday Times last weekend announcing that we have been provided with growth funding from leading private equity specialist, Piper. This wonderful opportunity will enable us to continue developing as a business with the added support and expertise of a company which specialises in helping consumer brands to grow (Piper have worked with names such as Boden and Pied-a-Terre).

Nick Whitworth, founder of Celtic Sheepskin, stated: “We are immensely proud of what we have built at Celtic but recognised that we needed to work with a partner to support us through our next phase of growth. Ours is a family business with strong values and a passion for providing exceptional products for our customers”.

So what does this mean for you – our customers?

Well for starters it means we will be able to offer you an even wider range of clothing and footwear, with plans already in place to launch a third catalogue to showcase our extensive Autumn/Winter range. So even more choice of gorgeous knitwear and organic natural pieces!

From a business point of view, as you can imagine we have many ideas in the pipeline but our first priority will be on staffing; We are the first to admit that regrettably we struggled to keep up with the demand for stock last year, primarily in the run up to Christmas (if you were affected by this we can only apologise) and this is something we must avoid this year to keep you - our customers –happy. To do this we need to ensure that we have enough staff in our factory to fulfil all your orders. We already have 55 employees across the company but we need even more! As our footwear is hand-made on site here in Newquay, we take great care to achieve the quality standards which you have come to expect (and quite rightly so!). In order for this to continue, we will be taking on more production staff than ever before to cope with the demand so that we do not disappoint you - our customers - this year.

Along with this, Piper’s investment will also enable us to expand our management team; Kath Whitworth, Director says “We are actively recruiting staff for pivotal management roles within the company, specifically Managing Director, Senior Buyer and Senior Merchandiser to help streamline and organise our systems. With these roles will come investment in the appropriate technologies to monitor and manage their designated departments efficiently.”

So as you can see there are exciting times ahead! We will of course keep you updated on all things Celtic Sheepskin as and when they happen.