History
Cash's has been delivering quality and service since 1846. Then the company was England's leading silk ribbon manufacturer. Today those traditional craft skills are enhanced with some of the industry's most advanced technologies and production techniques to offer our customers well priced woven labels and badges that help them succeed in today's competitive markets.
The brothers Cash fast outgrew this system and instead became factory masters. They were among the first in Coventry, pioneers of a more enlightened approach to employment. Soon, they planned to build a 'halfway house' which would allow their workers the independence of the old outworker methods while they themselves controlled output. In 1857, work began on a site at Kingfield which Cash's (UK) was to occupy for the next 138 years. Above rows of weavers' cottages, the brothers created an upper storey with well-lit work areas housing jacquard looms powered by a central beam engine. These were the famous Cash's Topshops. And the prizewinning silk ribbons woven there were used on the prettiest gowns, to the delight of fashionable society ladies. The Free Trade Bill of 1860 allowed continental ribbons to flood the English market and many established Coventry firms collapsed. Not Cash's. The brothers responded, switching production to narrow frillings, to Victorian silk commemoratives and latterly to woven labels with which garment manufacturers could identify their products. Then came the development that would make the name of Cash's (UK) famous.
Cash's (UK) is today one of the UK's best- quality weavers, a market leader with the computerized technology that now dominates this industry. Yet but for the pioneering fervour of two Quaker brothers in Coventry last century, the company would not exist.
John and Joseph Cash were their names. Elder sons of a wealthy stuff-merchant, they began production of silk ribbons in the early 1840s. Coventry by then was already famous for its silk weaving. Skilled jacquard weavers - Huguenots escaping persecution in Europe - had settled there and soon thousands of local people were employed in this cottage industry. Workers owned their own jacquard looms and the Cashs, like other merchants, distributed the silk for them to weave in their homes. A fixed price was paid for each finished piece.
The brothers Cash fast outgrew this system and instead became factory masters. They were among the first in Coventry, pioneers of a more enlightened approach to employment. Soon, they planned to build a 'halfway house' which would allow their workers the independence of the old outworker methods while they themselves controlled output. In 1857, work began on a site at Kingfield which Cash's (UK) was to occupy for the next 138 years. Above rows of weavers' cottages, the brothers created an upper storey with well-lit work areas housing jacquard looms powered by a central beam engine. These were the famous Cash's Topshops. And the prizewinning silk ribbons woven there were used on the prettiest gowns, to the delight of fashionable society ladies. The Free Trade Bill of 1860 allowed continental ribbons to flood the English market and many established Coventry firms collapsed. Not Cash's. The brothers responded, switching production to narrow frillings, to Victorian silk commemoratives and latterly to woven labels with which garment manufacturers could identify their products. Then came the development that would make the name of Cash's (UK) famous.
It was in the 1870s that the first Cash's woven nametape rattled off the jacquard looms. Since then successive generations of school children have come to rely on this method of identification. In January 1964, Cash's (UK) was appointed 'Manufacturers of Woven Name Tapes to Her Majesty the Queen.' Today, as the sole survivor of those historic Coventry weavers, Cash's has consolidated market leadership by diversifying the range of quality woven products and combining its weaving heritage with the latest developments in computerized technology.
(from Cash's website)
I remember well having these sewn into my school uniform! :o)
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