Clegg, a former employee of finishing specialist Friedheim International and latterly First 4 Print Finishing, began to research the market for print related promotional merchandise when he was facing redundancy in 2012.

He registered the name Print Related and began making calls but realised that with no financial backing, he couldn’t get very far. So, it was with the help of his terminally ill father that Clegg launched the business from his Tameside home, local newspaper Tameside Correspondent reported.

Clegg told Printweek: “The suppliers would only work on a pro forma basis because it was just me, myself and I with no trading history and not much cash in the bank.”

He continued: “So, I asked dad if I could use his credit card to get going and he said yes, that I should do what I needed to do. Dad was terminally ill at the time and I needed to do something because I was trying to look after him and mum as well as my own family and needed a wage.

“I used the card and from that I managed to build the business up until I was finally able to pay myself a wage.”

Clegg's father subsequently deteriorated and passed away. Clegg framed the credit card and keeps it in his office. 

“He’d helped me out so much. The card is a reminder of what he did for me.” he said.

Clegg continued to grow the business from home until 2019, outsourcing print sales locally on a wide range of merchandise with demand for embroidered work increasing alongside it, until he decided to bring the latter in-house.

“I had started to do quite a lot of outsourced embroidery, but the suppliers were letting me down, the prices were hit and miss, the quality was poor and it just wasn’t what I wanted to give to my customers,” he stated.

Clegg found a local business offering lease deals on embroidery machines. “I thought, I’ll have a punt at this,” he said.

“I’m a print finisher by trade, I know machines. It was a risk but I got the machine and put it in my kitchen and began practising. It started with bibs and babygrows and personalised products and it’s just taken off in an unbelievable way,” he added.

Bringing his son on board at the end of 2019 to work on marketing, the business launched a bulk-buy deal on beanie hats, which rapidly evolved into its ‘Mega Workwear Deal’, which Clegg says “exploded”.

“I had to get out of the house because it was becoming an embroidery shop and we had two foster children at the time and I just needed to make the space at home, so I managed to buy and build a 3x3m workspace in the garden,” he said.

Since then, building a team from family and people who had lost work due to Covid restrictions, Clegg has grown the business to employ three full-time, site-based employees, three part-time remote workers running advertising and up to five part-time shift embroidery workers, depending on demand.

The team moved into its Haughton Green store last December with Clegg investing in a new two-headed, high-speed embroidery machine to replace two slower devices.

Print Related’s original merchandise work, he explained, now goes hand-in-hand with the embroidery jobs, with tradespeople ordering branded products along with their clothing.

Additionally, since moving into the store, print orders have increasingly included wide-format work and vehicle wrapping, which Clegg outsources to local suppliers.

So, from such uncertain beginnings, where to now?

“I’m looking at growth and whether there may be a possible acquisition for us to grow the customer base,” Clegg said. “We work on tight margins because costs have increased so much but we are attracting a lot of work.”

“It’s a work in progress,” he said. “Our year end was last week and now is the time for me to sit and reflect on where we are, where we want to be and what I need to do to get there.”