Starting from the Kitchen Table
Paper Plus was established in 1999 by founders Cliff and Lucy Henry. To start with operations were very small, with Lucy building relationships with schools in the area from her kitchen table, whilst juggling a busy family life. In the early days Cliff busied himself finding premises and forging relationships with suppliers around the world.
Our First Premises
Later that same year, we moved into our first premises in Hollingdean, Brighton. The small storage unit wedged between houses in a residential area of the city was the perfect place from which to start growing our fledging business.
Oakwood House
We continued to operate from Hollingdean for 7 years but in 2006 we had truly outgrown the space. Our list of partner schools was growing steadily and we needed a bigger space to store our stock. We spent days scouring the area for suitable new premises, knowing that we wanted to stay local so we could keep working with our school partners in the Sussex area.
In April 2006 we found Oakwood House in the Victoria Business Park in Burgess Hill. The location was perfect and meant that we could increase the products we could offer, whilst still giving our customers the same fast, reliable service they had come to expect from us. The move also meant we had a larger office space to work from and twice the amount of storage space to hold our stock – a real leap forward for the business!
Onboarding Logistics
The business continued to grow from our new base in Oakwood House and we soon had expanded again beyond our capacity. In December 2011 more space was required so we enlisted the help of a local logistics firm to store our stock and help with our deliveries.
More staff were added to the team. Peter, Cliff’s father joined us as a partner in the business and still looks after our deliveries many years later, along with Gary, completing our logistics team. Whilst at Oakwood House we also took on several other new members of staff.
We were also delighted to be able to purchase our first 7.5 tonne truck which gave us the ability to handle larger loads, gave us more control over our delivery service and another foot up the ladder towards reaching our goals.
A Space for Growth
In August 2014 we had outgrown our space again and began the hunt for new premises. This time we didn’t need to search far and soon found a new home just around the corner.
67 Victoria Road gave us our own dedicated warehouse with bags of space for our growing stock, a large office space for our developing team as well as offices and meeting spaces.
Where We Are Today
Today, we are proud of our dedicated team of 18 staff members. Lucy and Cliff are still heavily involved in the day-to-day operations of the business and continue to empower their staff to grow and develop here at Paper Plus. Meet the Paper Plus team.
