Ash and Naina founded Smarty Childrenswear in 1986 when they opened their Hatfield Town Centre retail store. The Mothercare style shop, was at the heart of the local Welwyn Hatfield Community they lived in. Having sold prams, cots, pushchairs and babywear to most of the town's parents and grandparents, they also sold the basic schoolwear of the time. As the megastores took over the childrenswear and nursery market they migrated to a niche area in selling school uniforms. Even through the town's tough times of the early 90's, the local people supported the business. In 2002 the business was rebranded Smarty Schoolwear.
Today Ash and Naina have retired, but the business remains within the family. It now employs 15 members of full-time staff and has 3 retail stores in Hatfield, Potters Bar and Stevenage. It supplies over 80 schools in Hertfordshire and characterised by its personal and professional customer service, selling quality school uniforms. The business is trusted by schools and parents alike. The family's roots firmly fixed to the local area, supplying generation after generation school uniforms.
Smarty Schoolwear likes to build lasting partnerships with the schools we supply. In 2019 Smarty Schoolwear was recognised as the Runner Up in the National Schoolwear Association Awards for Best Community Partner 2019. Some of our achievements since 2019.
· We donated 200pcs of brand new jumpers/cardigans to Bishops Hatfield Girls School to give to students who were impacted by the COVID 19 crisis.
· We are affiliated with the NBS KISS charity which goes to Uganda every year. We send brand new dead stock for them to distribute to children in the poverty stricken areas.
· We are a large contributors to the Water for Africa Charity in Kenya, where we send brand new dead stock to the most remote parts of the country.
Every year we allocate 5% of our turnover to our local and international community.
Smarty Schoolwear understand that every business must become more environmentally aware for the future.
· Since 2019, all of our carrier bags are now made out of recycled paper which can be recycled themselves.
· All of the blazers we supplied are made from recycled plastic bottles.
· Many of the trousers we supply are made from recycled plastic bottles, each year we have stopped 150,000 bottles ending up in landfill.
· We use Biffa Waste Services to collect and process the waste from our business as they will split it up and recycle it.
· All of our heating and lighting systems in all the premises of our business have modified to low emission and high performance. Our new shop in Stevenage Town Centre derives 60% of its heating and lighting from solar panels.
