• Squeaky clean since 1918

Commercial laundries started in the UK in the 1870’s, usually owned and run by local businessmen. In 1918, a laundry was taken over by brothers George and Percival Stevens, and Paragon Laundry was born.

The laundry in Birmingham provided dry-cleaning services for private domestic customers and local hotels. Although collection and delivery was usually by horse and wagon, the forward-thinking brothers pursued the latest technology available for washing and ironing machines and washing presses, and so a successful laundry business was established.  The Birmingham laundry was followed by another in Cheltenham in 1924, and then a third in the Cotswold market town of Moreton-in-Marsh in the 1930’s.

8,500

Staff

4,368,000,000+

Pieces laundered

43

Locations

28,000+

Cars Sold

After their passing in the 1950’s, the company continued to be owned and run by the Stevens family with Derek Stevens (Percival Stevens’ son) taking command at the helm of the company. Over the next four decades he substantially expanded the business with a host of new laundries and dry-cleaning shops across Wales and the South of England including; Swindon, Charlton Kings, Newport, Llanelli, Cwmbran, Llandrindod Wells, Bridgwater, Malvern, Tenbury Wells, Brecon, Ross-on-Wye, Kington, and Oxford.

Away from laundry, the company pursued other avenues during this time, purchasing several garages across the South West, including North St Motors in Cheltenham and Westgate Motorhouse in Gloucester, which offered garage forecourt, vehicle salesrooms, paint and repair shops and self-service stations.

In the early 1970’s, having serviced local domestic customers for over 50 years, Paragon underwent its first major expansion with the acquisition of Southern Laundry. This included laundries in Newport, Swindon and the suburb of Charlton Kings, just outside Cheltenham, and was followed by a further site in Llanelli in 1975 and Bridgwater in the late 1970’s.

The early 1980’s then saw a further site in Ross-in-Wye bought into the fold. By the late 1980’s, with the demise of the traditional laundry market, Paragon ensured they were at the forefront of linen and garment rental market.

In response to market conditions and technological advances, the industry saw consolidation in the early 1990’s. As part of the process, investment was focussed into our larger processing sites with the Oxford and Charlton Kings sites being sold, and when the Moreton-in-Marsh laundry was destroyed by fire, the money was re-invested into expanding our Cheltenham laundry.

The mid-90’s ushered in a new era for the company, as the baton was passed on from Derek to his twin sons –  Robert and David Stevens – who became Joint Managing Directors after their father’s retirement in 1995. Following with the entrepreneurial spirit shown by their forefathers, the business grew to become one of largest independent commercial laundries in the UK and worked with many blue chip, multi-national hotel, leisure and manufacturing companies.

In the early 2000’s new brands were introduced, with the domestic dry-cleaning service becoming Fforbes, and a new service offering top quality tablelinen for hire to events across the country called Special Occasion Linen.

During this time, both the Swindon and Ross-on-Wye sites were sold and a new state-of-the-art purpose built processing and distribution centre was constructed on the outskirts of Ross-on-Wye in 2004.

In 2006 Paragon bought an existing laundry in Nottingham to expand the business and support its growing customer base in the Midlands and North West of England.

Through Paragon’s overseas arm NewGen, in 2008 work was completed on the company’s first overseas laundry, in Doha, Qatar, which for several years remained the largest in the Middle East. This site enabled further development in the area for NewGen with further projects in Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

Following (another!) fire at the Bridgwater site, Paragon subsequently opened their largest laundry, in Yeovil in the Spring of 2011 to cover operations across the South West region. To enable all sites to produce work as cost effectively as each other, in 2013 and 2014 the two smallest remaining sites at Newport and Kington were closed respectively with operations relocating to our Ross and Cheltenham factories.

Then in 2015, in an increasingly competitive industry, and as a hugely successful and viable business, Paragon was approached by another laundry company and Paragon’s shareholders decided to sell the business. As part of the sale, the shareholders retained pension and property management duties for a number of residential and commercial properties located across Wales, the Midlands and the South of England – including all of the current and also former laundries.

We certainly learnt a thing or two about laundry (and garages!) over the years and we came a long way since the days of horse and cart deliveries. We are immensely proud of our heritage and the hundreds of staff who have helped us – it really couldn’t have been done without all their hard work and efforts.