40 | SME News Midlands Enterprise Awards 2023 Best Family-Owned Crafts Company 2023 Situated in Clay Cross, a town in North East Derbyshire, Highlight Crafts Ltd. is a family-owned craft company that designs and manufactures inspirational and sustainable craft products. Equipped with a growing team of talented professionals, the company is committed to providing high-quality products and engaging with its customers to educate and inspire them. Highlight Crafts offers a number of craft-related products and services. On its easy-to-use website, it sells items for the craft enthusiast, including paper, dies, fabrics, brushes, scissors, paints, stamps, and more. Committed to providing quality products, the company delivers supplies and equipment that are produced to the highest of standards in Derbyshire. To cater to a wide variety of crafting techniques and activities, Highlight Crafts has created 12 different brands, the most well-known of which is Two Red Robins, its flagship die cutting range. Created by Stephanie Weightman, it has become one of the fastest selling paper craft die ranges in the UK. Another of its brands is Lemon Lane, a collection of fabrics that are designed and printed in-house. In the last 20 years, the craft industry has largely been driven by a combination of high street retailers, large-scale consumer events, and live television shopping. During the Covid-19 pandemic, such in-person events were postponed, but television shopping saw a substantial increase in demand as the market moved away from the high street and consumers began shopping online. Even now, consumers tend to favour online shopping. The industry has followed this trend, with most surviving retailers selling products either online only or both online and in-store. Established in 2021, in the midst of the pandemic, Highlight Crafts has been able to fit in with this digital shift by selling its products through its user-friendly website. The company also delivers live TV shopping demonstrations and online tutorials to engage with its customers virtually. Impressively, it has become the number one supplier to the Create & Craft TV shopping channel. Now that restrictions have been lifted, Highlight Crafts also engages with consumers at events, organised by the team at both Doncaster and Sandown racecourses. The company has also recently opened the Highlight Crafts Academy, where it provides face-to-face training through exciting classes that feature dies, fabrics, mixed media, digital crafting, and more. With facilities to teach various craft disciplines to members of both trade and public, the academy offers classes ranging from four hours long to a whole week. Located only 15 minutes from the M1 and less than 30 minutes from the Chesterfield and Alfreton train stations, Highlight Crafts Academy is conveniently located for visitors from both near and far. Those who love crafts or want to give them a try are invited to indulge in a crafty holiday in Clay Cross, where they can attend classes at the academy and explore the area’s nature, shops, and cafés. Being centrally located in the UK and near the Peak District National Park, Highlight Crafts is easily accessible through public transport and surrounded by local attractions. These factors give customers an additional reason to personally attend the events it hosts, enabling it to expand its reach beyond the online sphere. Education and inspiration truly underpin the values of Highlight Crafts and how it operates on a day-to-day basis. By engaging with its customers through various channels and providing them with training and tutorials, the company aims to inspire its customers to create whilst educating them on how to best use the products they buy. If a customer doesn’t know how to use a product, they are unlikely to purchase it or get the most out of it if they do. For this reason, Highlight Crafts is committed to ensuring that customers are equipped with not only the best quality products, designs, and techniques, but also the knowledge of how to use them in order to maximise their enjoyment of the craft. This builds long term relationships and trust with customers on all levels, leading to a happy and loyal customer base and plenty of repeat buyers. Since its establishment in 2021, Highlight Crafts has become a market leader in the design and development of new and innovative products for the paper craft and soft craft sectors. In the last 12 months, it has grown exponentially in terms of its product range, profit turnover, and staff recruitment. Having started out with three staff members, the company is now equipped with a team of 28 talented individuals, all from surrounding areas. The team at Highlight Crafts have a wealth of experience in direct-toconsumer roles within the craft sector, for example in TV shopping, e-commerce platforms, and face-to-face events. From these experiences, its employees have developed extensive expertise and knowledge about the industry and good customer service, which they utilise today in their roles at Highlight Crafts.
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