Quills Celebrates 25th Anniversary

In addition to the Queens Jubilee Anniversary, Quills has a celebration of its own, as the business celebrates 25 years of trading this June 2022.

With this in mind, we thought we’d take a little trip down memory lane for those of you that don’t know the Quills story and how the business began.

Quills was started by Managing Director Andy Efstathiou at the tender age of 22 working in his parent’s front room in Surrey in 1997.  He recalls working at the dining room table with a telephone, fax machine and a pad and pen.  These humble beginnings then lead onto Andy making a small office in his parent garage, then moving into small business premises in West Croydon, then onto a business park in South Croydon and finally onto Spitfire Business Park in Croydon where the business resides today.

On this journey Andy’s best friend Adam Benbow joined the team and additional family members came onboard to support the entrepreneur. Sales Director Tom Davinson joined Quills over 15 years ago and is still with company today, along with Adam who is now the Operations Director.

Many changes have happened over the years since the business started out selling business supplies back in 1997.  The goal had always been to provide more services to ensure Quills could grow and be a trusted purchasing partner for its clients.  Quills Group, Office Solutions became the new trading name as the solutions and service offering grew to include:-

  • Furniture & Fit Out’s
  • Facilities Management
  • Managed Print Services
  • Cleaning & Hygiene Services
  • Shredding, Recycling and Waste Management
  • Print & Design
  • Branded Promotional Gifts & Event Supplies
  • PPE Supplies
  • Coffee & Beverage Solutions
  • Archiving

During the last decade, Quills growth strategy saw the business complete 7 acquisitions where the internal team pulled together to ensure data, employee transfers and the customer journey was as smooth as possible.  Take a look at the acquisition timeline below.

  1. December 2021 – Control Office Supplies
  2. October 2019 – UOE
  3. January 2019 – Evolution Office Supplies
  4. May 2018 – William West
  5. February 2017 – Rebel Office Supplies
  6. October 2016 – Business Essentials
  7. July 2011 – Codex Southern Ltd

When asked what the next 5 years will hold for Quills, Managing Director Andy Efstathiou said “We will continue our focus on products and services that do not have a negative impact on the environment to support our customers with their sustainability targets. We’ve also seen our Facilities Management division expand over the last two years and we will continue to focus in this area and ensure we have great response times and an even wider network of experts to support our clients with their maintenance needs throughout the year. We hope to continue our growth, ensuring customers are aware of our additional services and we will continue to streamline our IT infrastructure.  Supporting our employees work life balance will also continue and we will be raising further awareness on our rewards programme where we can help our clients to support their local community or our environmental Plant a Tree programme.

After a challenging two years we are now looking forward to the future and seeing more employees return to the workplace.”