History
IN THE BEGINNING
The Johnson Service Group can trace is origins back to 1780, but it was in the mid nineteenth century when the industrial revolution was at its height that a group of like minded textile-related businesses founded an alliance. From here the Johnson Service Group was officially formed in 1920 with the amalgamation of three leading dry cleaning companies.
ACQUISION AND GROWTH
The group grew rapidly through both organic and acquaistions of old-established leaders in the trade. In most of it's acquistions Johnsons retained the name and independent identity of the aquired company in order to preserve local goodwill attaching to a well-known name and retain staff loyalty and the advantages of local company initiative and autonomy.
Initially the local companies existed as receiving units only until dry-cleaning machines were introduced. The natural progression was then to introduce a roller towel and workwear service.
CROSSING THE SEAS
The group developed a relationship with Apparelmaster Inc in the USA and agreed to adopt their workwear service and run it here in the UK under licence.
APPARELMASTER LTD
In 1974 Apparelmaster Ltd commenced trading from its historic base of Bootle in Liverpool, where it has been for 33 years. This was until early 2007 when the head office was relocated to a state of the art facility in Fulwood, Preston.
Soon after Bootle was opened further operations followed in Birmingham, Brighton, and Dewsbury.
The company changed its name to Johnson Group Workwear and Towel Hire Services Ltd while acquiring yet more operations across the UK. With the business growing rapidly Apparelmaster rocketed from zero to fourth largest in the UK in just 14 years.
The group restructured in 1995 to form two distinctive divisons covering the two aspects of the core business, Johnsons Cleaners UK Ltd, and Apparelmaster UK Ltd. Shortly after the groups name was also changed, to the Johnson Service Group Plc as to be better recognised for supplying a service to industry. As the company celebrated its 25th Anniversary in 1999 they introduced the new corporate identity and the change of names.
Entering into the new millenium Apparelmaster aquired Semara Holdings, formally Sketchley, for £103 million, taking a major step towards becoming the UK's number one textile rental supplier. This move brought with it four additional processing plants and a workwear garment manufacturer increasing Johnsons Apparelmaster's share of the UK Textile Rental market.
Johnsons Service Group has now focused on three core areas of business, these being textile rental, facilities management, and drycleaning. Commanding an ever growing market share Johnsons Apparelmaster is now the UK's No.1 Workwear rental and workplace services provider.
THE UK'S LEADING WORKWEAR AND HYGIENE SERVICE PROVIDER
Johnsons Apparelmaster continues to grow from strength to strength, investing in it's people and business, and currently clothing over 1 million people at work each week!
Now with a service infrastructure including 17 service centres, over 250 vehicles on the road each day, and with over 2000 dedicated employees... Johnsons Apparelmaster is the UK's market leader in Workwear rental and hygiene services.
