Every week, a mail order clothing catalogue designed in Brampton drops on tens of thousands of doormats across the UK.
When a customer places a telephone order, their call is answered by a team member based at the same office, and their goods are picked, packed and shipped from a warehouse at the same site.
Even the clothing they receive in their delivery is designed and sampled in Brampton.
WCF Home Shopping is one of the biggest players in its sector in the UK and is probably better known by its nationwide brands: Country Collection, James Meade and The Classic Boutique.
WCF’s head office at Crawhall in Brampton is home to a team of more than 70 working across clothes design, sample making, buying and merchandising, graphic design, customer service, warehouse fulfilment, marketing, data analysis and segmentation and finance.
The customer demographic is a mature lady, usually aged 75 and over, and every member of the team knows exactly who ‘she’ is and how she likes to dress.
From choosing prints, colours and fabrics at the very start of the design process to a simple and free in-house returns service, the business is set up to ensure ‘she’ gets the best product and service.
It’s a formula which is working. WCF Home Shopping has a strong, established market presence with sales up two per cent in the year to May 2024.
In December 2023, WCF acquired North Yorkshire-based mail order clothing and lingerie firm, Bella di Notte, with the existing Bella team continuing to run the operation from its base in Malton.
WCF Home Shopping is part of WCF’s family of businesses which operate across the UK in the retail, leisure and logistics sectors, employing almost 400 people in more than 30 locations. Established in Whitehaven in 1911 as the farmers’ cooperative, West Cumberland Farmers, the part employee owned firm, became WCF Ltd in 1988 and moved into home shopping in the 1980s with the launch of the Country Collection.
It acquired James Meade in 2003.
Debbie Brimicombe is general manager of WCF Home Shopping and oversees the Brampton-based operation.
She shares an open plan office with designer Sandra May surrounded by sample garments and hundreds of tactile fabric swatches.
“The key to our business is understanding our customers and keeping them in mind in everything we do,” she said.
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