New school tie network

Social enterprise is a relatively recent idea. There can be a number of reasons for setting one up. Robin Holiday began Get It 4 School (www.getit4 school.co.uk), for example, following yet another fundraising note from his children’s schools. The idea of the business is to sell parents quality school uniform at cheaper prices than they’re likely to find in the authorised outlets.

Holiday’s background is in software and he had an existing business selling web packages to health clubs. Called CLF Distribution, it distributes nutrition products to gyms and similar facilities. “We created a mail order system for health clubs so we’d offer individual e-commerce websites that would look and feel like part of the clubs’ own sites.” Profits on sales would be split with the clubs and, oddly, the model for this business, working with a specific group with a target market of like-minded people, was transferable when the schools idea came up.

Like a lot of ideas, the Getit4school scheme came up almost by accident. “What happened was my children came home from school with a piece of paper with pounds off uniform and a note asking parents for fundraising ideas for the school. I didn’t think much of it but later I was buying their uniform and the price was high for what it was; you could only buy that badged item from one store.” He wanted better quality and better prices.

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“I thought I could use the mail order system I already had to personalise a shop to the school to sell embroidered products, but at that stage I realised I’d be making a profit.” Holiday felt, perhaps understandably, that he wasn’t comfortable profiting from parents within the State education system making compulsory purchases of uniform in this way. “I thought this would be an opportunity for me to give something back to the community.”

He therefore set about taking the model he’d used in CLF Distribution, in which the margin was split with the health clubs, and instead considered sending all the profits back to participating schools. “Then I felt that schools profiteering out of school uniforms was just no better.”

Eventually he decided to aim for improved quality and ploughed all the profits into reducing the prices for parents. “If there’s a surplus revenue from selling uniforms then that’s returned to the school; there are other opportunities for them to purchase items through our partners such as Amazon and Tesco where we get a kickback through a referral scheme and we pass that to the relevant school, too.”

When it came to deciding what sort of profit he wanted for himself – and in the early days it was just Holiday by himself – he found himself unable to come up with a suitable figure. “I was doing some work on the internet looking at different business models and I did consider making it a charity. The thing with a charity, though, is that you rely on the general public giving you something in order to generate your funds.” While trawling the internet for ideas he came across the work done by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus on social enterprises. “This is where, once the business is established and the working capital has been injected, the business is self-perpetuating through the community it serves. It’s similar to a non-profit organisation.”

This ethic dictated a number of working practices through the company. It works for the community, so goods are sourced locally. “Sponsors are local sponsors, we put embroidery back into the community, we look for local suppliers and certainly want to promote British goods.”

The pilot scheme ran in 2005 with the two schools attended by Holiday’s children. The following year 37 schools were on board; in 2007, 60 schools came in and this year around 100 schools are taking part. “We work with the State sector,” he explains. “Private schools are generally peopled by families who can afford the fees and whatever they’re asking for uniform.”

The savings should grow as the revenues grow to match the expenses. “The idea is to reduce the costs to parents as we produce surplus income, providing unique school uniforms for supermarket prices eventually.” There are now six people working for the enterprise. He welcomes schools into the scheme: “There are schools where we don’t feel it’s appropriate, when they want to profit from the uniform. We feel school uniforms should be a service and other things should raise funds, and that falls in with Government guidelines.”

Most schools that hear about the scheme welcome it. Next year he hopes for 200 to take part in the scheme and beyond that he hopes for still more. To many entrepreneurs it will seem ironic that no matter how much it grows, Holiday’s plans don’t involve retaining a penny of the profit.

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