Engage Focus’
BAME PROFILE 73
Engage Focus’
from the web www. engagemagazine. co. uk
Inspirational
Ideas Ltd.
Engage is committed to raising the profile of the many successful and diverse BME enterprises that operate in the UK and internationally. In each issue, engage will randomly select a BME enterprise that is registered on the engage database and invite that company to promote their business in the magazine. Today we profile...
Patrice Hinds runs Inspirational Ideas Ltd, a company based in a commercial centre in southeast London. The name defines exactly what the company does. They are promotional merchandising design conceptualists who bring star quality ideas, market knowledge and products to any companies’ target audience.
Patrice’ s original idea for the company was to use the UK flag and print it on to T – Shirts and hand made jumpers from Kathmandu. The difference was that the print was in Red, Yellow and Green. His motivations were of a multi – cultural and multi – dimensional city.
His big break came when the band Leftfield wore his shirts on television for the Mercury Music Prize awards. Patrice contacted them to offer more of his products and as a result was asked to produce the merchandise for the tour of their double platinum album“ Leftism”. From this, he was asked to work with more bands and was also approached by PR and Advertising companies to produce merchandise for their campaigns.
With this overwhelming interest, Patrice approached the Prince’ s Trust for funding in 1994. He was also backed financially by his father, two friends( a merchant banker
and accountant), the fashion company, Komodo and with his own sheer guts and determination to succeed Inspirational Ideas was born.
Inspirational produce, supply, manufacture and print everything and anything you can think of from T – Shirts, pens, banners, bags to stainless steel invites or even branding bottles of alcoholic beverages with company logos. They help companies’ promote their own brands or products as well as producing products for retail.
At the beginning it took a few months for the business to get going as Inspirational had to let people know who they were and what they did. The industry itself is renowned for short lead times and this turned out to be one of the USP’ s for Inspirational as they quickly gained a reputation for their fast turnaround and were perceived as being the original‘ last minute. com’!
Some clients include: Shell, Ferrari, Various Councils such as Lewisham, Haringey, Brent and Southwark, Evisu, Coca – cola, Red Bull, Bacardi, Universal Films, Metro tartan, Cadogan Hotel, Great Eastern Hotel, O2, Metropolitan Police, Sprite, Housing Associations, Spar, Sergio Tacchini and Lego.
Inspirational Ideas is currently completing a business plan to gain expansion funding. This funding will be used to buy it’ s own property to work from, step up marketing, buy equipment to start doing small production runs under the roof in order to tap into the small business market e. g. business cards, stationery, T – Shirt printing, embroidery, mugs, hats, keyrings, pens and badges.
Also, Inspirational will be trying to establish a presence in the high street in the form of a chain of short run printers, ideally leading to franchising opportunities. Lastly, with Inspirational’ s overseas contacts, they will be importing original inspirational products for the promotional and retail markets.
We have big plans and many inspirational ideas for the future.
To contact Inspirational Ideas Ltd: Tel: 08708 518 618 Mob: 07961 182 464 E – mail: info @ inspirational – ideas. co. uk
To register your business with engage, please visit www. engagemagazine. co. uk and click on‘ register your business’
ISSUE TWO 2006 engage