Our Responsibility

Our Partners

Taking care of everyone we work with is important to us. By developing direct relationships with small, carefully selected suppliers – British-based where possible – we know exactly who is making our yarns and trims. Take our beautiful, cosy lambswool – it’s spun by a 250-year-old mill in West Yorkshire.A little more local to us in Derbyshire is Cluny Lace. Based in Ilkeston, they have been producing exceptional quality Leavers lace since 1760 and remain owned by the same family – now in its ninth generation! We also source some of our bamboo from a Leicester-based fabric manufacturer that uses a variety of recycled and organic yarns.

A place for all

It’s our aim to make David Nieper a place for all, where everyone feels valued and free to be themselves. We’re unbiased when choosing the best people to work with and are proud to have a wonderful team, ranging in age from 18 to 94. We’re also championing women in fashion with an all-female design team and women in leadership roles across our business.

Wellbeing

Our people feel supported, fulfilled and happy when they come to work. We’re proud to have been the first British fashion manufacturer included in The Sunday Times ‘Best 100 Companies to Work For’ list and maintain an exceptionally low staff turnover rate – many of our staff have been with us for 25 years. Alongside generous benefits, our employees enjoy fantastic discounts, subsidised cafe meals, service awards and staff events organised by our social committee. We value every member of our team and help them reach their goals through training and development. We’re taking strides as a learning organisation, where our people can build skills and progress their career, and the next generation can learn prized techniques.

Community

We’re proud of our Derbyshire roots. Family values have been at our heart for 60 years, and we seize every chance to support the causes important to our customers and community. Fundraising events – from cake sales to dress-up days – help us back local charities, while our matched-giving scheme doubles the amount our employees raise for good causes. The Christopher Nieper Foundation is also proud to sponsor The Spirit of Alfreton, a community website we helped to set up during the Covid-19 pandemic. It acts as a hub for the community, where locals can find information about services and events.

Inspiring the next generation

Our positive impact extends to future generations via our apprenticeships. We led the national trailblazer for apprenticeships in British fashion and wrote the standards now followed by training providers and colleges nationwide. In 2019, we became an employer provider for apprenticeships – the first British fashion brand to gain this standing. We now have an internal Sewing Academy offering first-hand training and two nationally recognised apprenticeships, covering all aspects of luxury garment making. We’ll be supporting around a dozen trainees at any one time. Our company also sponsors the David Nieper Academy, Alfreton's secondary school for 850 pupils. Previously amongst the weakest 2% of English schools and rated 'inadequate' by Ofsted, it’s now one of the most oversubscribed in Derbyshire thanks to an ambitious, career-focused curriculum. Intake has quadrupled, the Sixth Form has been re-established and it’s just received its best Ofsted result in 20 years. We couldn’t be more proud.

Social Responsibility

David Nieper is a designer, manufacturer and retailer of fine ladies’ fashion, established in Derbyshire in 1961 and a family business in every sense of the word. Our people are at the heart of everything we do and we value the contribution of each and every individual.

Our Values

We take our responsibilities seriously to ensure a sustainable future for our people and our planet. Our company takes a leadership stance within the fashion and textiles sector to promote these values throughout the industry.
We are committed to manufacturing in Britain and have never taken production overseas. We prioritize local jobs, local economic prosperity and operate a production process with minimum impact on the environment.

Modern slavery

We are fully committed to ensuring employee welfare and human rights are respected both in our own business and throughout our entire supply chain. We fully support the legislation put in place for the prevention of modern slavery and human trafficking in the Modern Slavery Act 2015.The fashion and textiles industry is a complex one, typically with many tiers forming supply chains that stretch across the globe; we manufacture in the UK and therefore have direct influence over production.Our long-term relationships with fabric suppliers offer good insight into their operating practises and working conditions, however we do understand this is only part of the picture. To fully understand our entire supply network and to ensure responsible practise at each stage of production we have traced raw materials and components as far back as possible and continue to map and gather data to inform our purchasing choices.

Health and safety

David Nieper Limited is fully committed to meeting its responsibilities under the Health & Safety at Work Act 1974, the Management of Health & Safety at Work Regulations 1999 and associated protective legislation, both as an Employer and as a Company.To achieve these objectives we have appointed designated members of staff to be responsible for Company health and safety; to keep workplace health, safety and welfare procedures under constant review; to liaise with the Health and Safety Executive wherever necessary; and to keep the Company and its Board of Directors abreast of new legislation, EU Directives, Regulations and British Standards, in order to ensure ongoing compliance with the law.

Staff - Wellbeing and development

We are proud that David Nieper was the first British fashion manufacturer to be included in the ‘Best 100 Companies to Work For’ list by The Sunday Times. The company scored highly for looking after staff wellbeing, with a consistently low staff turnover and 50% of the company holding long service awards of 10+ years.We are committed to quality and sustainable production, promoting the knowledge and skills of past and future generations through jobs, education and investment in our people, industry and community.We follow a workforce development plan, the aim being to become a learning organisation so that every person can improve, learn and progress. As such there is a comprehensive set of policies in place to ensure staff wellbeing.

Education and social mobility

The David Nieper approach to social responsibility is both altruistic and far reaching, not only creating jobs for local people, but also prioritising the educational welfare of local children.To help raise the level of education and skills in the area, David Nieper has taken the unprecedented step of setting up an education trust and sponsoring the local secondary school which had been in the bottom two percent of schools for attainment in the UK.In 2015, the David Nieper Education Trust was formed. Academisation of the former school took place on 1st September 2016, creating the David Nieper Academy. Students moved into their new £15m school building in February 2017, with new teaching staff and a new uniform free for all students. A new sixth form college opened in September 2017.After less than 3 years of opening the school has almost tripled the number of students joining, been reported as improving in its first Ofsted inspection and is oversubscribed for the first time in over 25 years. The school’s reputation has been transformed within the community and is fast becoming the school of choice for local parents.David Nieper has an extensive social mobility programme and believes that no child should be disadvantaged because of background. As such the company strives to engage with young people at each stage of their education journey; from primary school design competitions, to secondary school work experience programmes, university scholarships for undergraduates, vocational training within the company’s own onsite sewing school and taking the lead in developing industry apprenticeships.Find out more about the David Nieper Education Trust and Sewing Academy.