Murray 50th Anniversary Q&A with Andy Bass: Part 1

This year marks 50 years of the Murray brand. To commemorate this milestone, our Content Marketing Specialist Angie Weisgal sat down with our Business Development Director Andy Bass for a two part interview to talk about Murray history. A nice trip down memory lane!

Angie: How did Murray get started?

Andy: It started in 1975, and it began with my father having worked part-time for his father-in-law in suiting and textiles and tailoring during the 1960’s. By the early 1970s, He recognised the burgeoning security industry and realised that there was a market there for security uniform, which was principally why he set up Murray, and that’s how we started out beginning to get contracts for security uniform.

Angie: Why was security growing a lot at that time?

Andy: It was generally recognised that crime was on the rise and factories, particularly there were a lot of big manufacturing plants around the Midlands, a lot more than there is today. All of those plants and factories employed their own security teams, and so they would have gatemen at the gate and security teams who would patrol the factories as well.

So typically, a factory could have anything up to 20 or 30 security staff, and when you times that up by probably 70 or 80 manufacturers in the Midlands alone, that represented quite a lot to go at. The uniform in those days consisted of a proper suit, not a pullover or a soft shell or anything like that. It was a tailored trouser and tailored uniform jacket. Each was measured up personally for the individual. It wasn’t stock sizes or anything like that, and they had their own livery and the company badges and names. So each person’s uniform by the time you’d given them, there’s the tunic, as we called it, and at least two, if not three pairs of trousers, four to five shirts, probably an under pullover or a slipover, and then shoes, belts, accessories, like gloves. The spend per security officer was quite reasonable.

Angie: How did you get started at Murray?

Andy: I joined the family business in 1979 and at that time it was still only a very small family members only business. I did most things actually from picking orders, serving at the trade counter, answering the phones, raising invoices, and delivery notes. All of this was manual work. The invoices for instance, were mostly handwritten, surprisingly.

It was a complete variety of jobs, including accounts and bookkeeping as well. So you had to be very versatile and move from one thing to another because there were only two or three people working in the business.

Angie: How fast did the business grow?

Andy: 1975 was a very difficult time economically in the UK, the 70s were very depressed, so it was a struggle to get the business going. It was a lot of hard work. So I would say that by comparison to how a business can grow today, the growth was extremely slow.

However, by about 1980/1981, the bank manager whom you kept in touch with very closely in those days, he was almost like a business advisor as well as your bank manager. And he used the words which we’d long-awaited to hear from him, ‘I think this business is established now,’ so from the get-go in 1975, it probably took six years for us to be able to say that it was an established business.

Angie: What would you say was Murray’s first big break?

Andy: That’s an interesting question. One that sticks in my mind is that within the first year of trading, Murray actually picked up a contract for our first bespoke workwear, which is interesting because that’s the direction we’ve now gone in. So that actually happened within the first year. It was a company called GEC and they wanted what we in those days was called Engineering coats, but they wanted them designed in their particular company colours and we did that. And even though we had very little experience at the time, it was a success. And yes, that kind of gave us a little bit of a steering direction that security uniform wasn’t the only avenue we could go down, and we began to explore the work we’re seeing more and more of as the years went on.

We went in a few directions that didn’t prove profitable. We had a brief foray into school uniform, a brief foray into club uniform like bowling clubs and things like that, but they really didn’t work out well because they were serving an individual customer at those clubs, rather than a business. So really, they took up an awful lot of time for very little return. So yeah, we had a few false starts, which we had to back out of as soon as we could.

Angie: Tell me about your training as a tailor and how it informs the work done day to day at Murray.

Andy: Yeah, that’s an interesting one. My father’s role, when he was working for a large industry was as a training manager. He actually ran a training school, so he was always very keen on training.

When I’d agreed to come into the business, he said, well, look, I do want to see that you get some proper training. We looked around and there was nothing in Coventry on textiles and tailoring. The nearest was Birmingham, so we arranged to go and see them in Birmingham and sat down with them. We worked out that if I did a very long day, I could kind of run two courses at the same time and shorten down my training time.

Included in the training was learning all about textiles themselves, how textiles are put together, what makes a good and bad textile all the different types of weaves, all the technical knowledge on textiles and then design. I had to learn how to design garments and that included what we call pattern cutting. In those days you drafted a pattern by hand and then you cut the pattern and from the pattern you then cut the garments. So we had to learn all of that and then finally learn how to actually use the machines to put garments together. So that was what we called the craft certificate. You become an actual tailor by being able to cut your own patterns, cut your cloth, and then actually sew the garment together, including all the difficult bits, like learning how to make welt pockets and we had to learn to sew button holes by hand and they had to be a very good standard if you wanted to get your craft certificate. So yeah, it was all very good grounding, and it’s been very useful since.

Angie: Do you find that training informs your day-to-day life, like when buying clothes?

Andy: It absolutely does. Things that I never would have thought about or recognised in a garment before I will see straight away, it’s good or it’s bad. It’s very simple things like how are sleeves put in. I can see straight away on a on a coat or a jacket, whether a sleeve is placed in correctly or whether they haven’t quite aligned, the sleeve head with the position it should be in. Things like that and the fit of the garment as well. You can tell the quality of the garment the minute you try it on, whether it’s well tailored and well balanced, a well-balanced design.

So yeah, a lot of that and it also has proved very useful from a customer point of view. Customers like the security of knowing that there is someone looking after their account who knows textiles inside out and who knows garments inside out and how garments should be designed and how garment engineering of the pattern should be produced so that garments fit and flow with body movement and that we can use the very best fabrics. We know how to specify fabrics to make sure that that particular garment really works well in the environment and use it’s going to be put to.

Angie: How would you describe the company culture?

Andy: I think the company culture is all about our people. We’ve always wanted to ensure that the people we employ really are there for the customer and that they’re really passionate about the work they do. And I think we’ve succeeded in that.

I had a very interesting example where at one of our events, the CEO of a very large company, I won’t say which one, and I hadn’t met him before and I went and introduced myself and said, look, I’d just like to ask you one question. Why is it that you came to us and why is it that you stayed with us? He said that’s simple Andy, I can answer in one word, it’s your people. We love your people. So our people are incredibly important to us. We recognise that our people are our business. What they reflect and what they’re passionate about really is our culture, I believe.

Angie: What do you think has contributed to Murray’s longevity as a company?

Andy: That’s a good question and interesting one. I think right from the get-go because of our long-held links, knowledge, and experience in the tailoring trade, we’ve always kind of done our own thing.

A lot of people that came into the workwear and uniform market just would go and buy off a wholesaler and sell on, but we haven’t taken that route right from the get-go. We took the route of selecting fabrics, selecting manufacturers in the initial days. Obviously, they were all UK, so we had plenty of fabric mills in the UK initially and then we had plenty of factories in the UK.

We used to select all our own fabrics and select factories specifically to work for us to make according to our specifications and how we wanted the garments made. And that has definitely given us an edge because it meant that Murray had its own garments and people began to recognise that quality and Murray was synonymous and that stood us in good step.

Stay tuned for part two of our interview!

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