Top Gear

Scott Leathers is the only major provider of motorcycle safety clothing that manufactures within the UK. At its factory, based in the North East, Scott Leathers ensures strict quality control, with manufacture, delivery and purchasing all retained within these shores.

From everyday motorcycle wear to competition suits, Scott Leathers manufactures to the very highest specification, with no recourse to back orders to Italy, no checking stock in warehouses and no shipping from Eastern Europe. The company has a growing order book and supplies various police forces, including the Met.

The business owner, Jim Aired, was working as an employee for a company in the early 1980’s, which had gone into liquidation. Starting a similar business purely with his own funds, Jim soon recognised that factoring would supply the ready access to working capital that his cash-hungry business would need.

Despite the company’s impressive record for rapid growth, the more Mr. Aired worked with the existing bank-owned factor, the more he felt that the business was being treated as a small fish in a big sea and so went in search of a more supportive factoring company.

Mr. Aired comments: “Working with SME Invoice Finance is an altogether different proposition than that of the high street banks. After a meeting with SME, I could see that they genuinely do understand businesses of our size. We have a very good relationship. They keep us informed and do a very professional job in chasing our customers for payment. Despite the obvious efficiency of their people, they never come across as official and impersonal, like the banks.”

The factoring facility from SME Invoice Finance has enabled Scott Leathers to achieve far more than funding their growth. With the benefit of the high level of working capital available immediately, they are now in a position to negotiate with the producers of high quality materials in Brazil to secure preferential bulk discounts.

Mr. Aired ads, “Now we are planning to go direct to the supplier of the materials rather than via the wholesaler, this initiative alone will save the business around £25k a year.“

In addition to focusing on its core markets and expanding on the opportunities within the various UK police forces and the Ministry of Defence, Scott Leathers has recently embarked on new product development for some radically different markets.

Following a chance meeting with a motorcycle gear buyer at a trade show who worked on oil rigs, Mr. Aired identified that Scott Leathers had the ideal range of skills in-house to be able to create a custom-made suit that would make a significant difference to workforce productivity. The business owner said, “You can imagine how hostile the environments can be out there on the oil rigs. At the moment, the men can only work on jobs such as blasting rust on a rig for a quarter of an hour at a time due to the drenching, below-freezing conditions. The suit that we have designed more than doubles the time that the men can be out there in the elements and provides significantly greater comfort. The funding available from SME Invoice Finance has made these this type of investment possible.”

With such a strong commitment to innovation, matched with the support of SME Invoice Finance, Scott Leathers is one highway star to watch out for.

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