Business to invest £½m in new fancy dress store

Aug 21 2008 by John Rowbotham, Hamilton Advertiser

ONE of the best-known names on the Hamilton ‘high street’ is planning a £430,000 investment.

Family firm Superquickprint are set to open a shop selling fancy dress costumes in a 3000sq ft unit in the new Hamilton Towers development.

The unit is opposite their Inkspot store in Castle Street.

It will be double the size of the existing retail area and create five full-time staff and a number of part-time posts.

Company retail director Marion Super said they hoped the new store, to be known as ‘Dazzle with Inkspot’, would open by mid-September, in time to cash in on the fancy dress parties planned for Hallowe’en and the Festive Season.

The family firm, started 39 years ago by Marion’s father, Tom, currently employ 30 staff and a further five or six part-time workers.

They are best known as printers and stationery suppliers, although sale of fancy dress costume has become a growing part of the business.

Marion said: “This is a huge investment for us, but it will protect the jobs of the staff we already employ and in terms of fancy dress retailing, put us in the forefront in Scotland if not the whole of the United Kingdom.

“These days, people are holding lots of fancy dress parties and ‘themed’ parties.

“Our retail department depends on fancy dress sales in autumn because costume parties, particularly at Hallowe’en, have become so big.

“We get customers coming from Glasgow and Edinburgh and online sales from as far away as Gibraltar.

“We also provide fancy dress for hen and stag nights, and last October we had a customer who dressed her whole wedding party in costumes from our shop; it was a pirates theme.”

Marion said their best-selling costume was that of Dorothy from ‘Wizard of Oz’ and Batgirl, and their most expensive: at £120, the garb worn by the Johnny Depp character in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’.

Hamilton Towers is the £20m shops and offices development under construction at the corner of Castle Street and the Town Square.

Superquickprint three years ago invested almost £½m in machinery to improve their printing operation.

They supply printed material to a diverse range of businesses, among them football clubs Celtic, Hibs, Birmingham City and Fulham, the Variety Club of Scotland, Lanarkshire Chamber of Commerce, and St Andrew’s Hospice, Airdrie.

Marion’s brother, Martin, is managing director of the firm and sister Caroline is also a director. Dad, Tom, who is now 70, has retired.