We’re immensely proud to announce that we’ve won a prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the International Trade category for 2020.
The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise are widely regarded as the highest accolade in British business and they’re awarded to businesses for outstanding achievement and our award in the International Trade category is a reward for exceptional overseas sales growth. These awards were established in 1965 and this year we’re one of 220 businesses who can proudly call themselves winners.
Whilst we’re absolutely delighted to win this award, we understand that it obviously comes at a difficult time with the world suffering amidst the coronavirus outbreak. We’d love nothing more than for this to be a normal day and to celebrate with our amazing team here at our factory, all of whom deserve this prestigious award for playing their part every day on our busy factory floor and in our offices.
Nevertheless, winning this award and to have our business endorsed by Her Majesty the Queen personally is an absolute honour. The award recognises the growth in our exports to over 60 countries, with the USA, Germany, Italy, Ukraine, Australia, Japan & China among the most common destinations for our shoes.
With this, we want to thank every single one of our customers around the world for helping us achieve such a prestigious honour. It wouldn’t be possible without you, the dancers around the world trusting our products as your shoe of choice when you step out onto the floor.
We’re exceptionally proud to win this whilst still very much a close-knit family business. A father and son partnership with 8 members of our team of 35 across the business having been with us for over 20 years. We opened our doors in 1981 and we celebrate our 40th birthday next year and two of those eight members of our team have been with us since day one!
For now, we continue to focus on working our way through the coronavirus outbreak and preparing our business for what could be a slightly different world when we come through the other side. Thankfully this won’t last forever, and we look forward to you all getting back to your dancing, so we can get back to working hard on designing, innovating, developing and manufacturing the shoes that we hope makes your dancing an even more pleasurable experience.
Take care, stay healthy and thank you very much for choosing our shoes and helping us achieve this.
Justin, Rashmi & every one of us at International Dance Shoes