Would You Like Navy Blue, Royal Blue or French Blue?

What's in store for 'The Store'

You may have noticed a couple of new faces in our TSS Store. Anthea and Nicole have joined our Store team in conjunction with Perm-a-Pleat, a family owned and operated uniform manufacturing and retail company. This didn’t happen overnight, but over a six month process of touring factories, tendering proposals and school visits.

The Store here at TSS is run by the P&F Association and being a volunteer organisation, it was decided The Store needed a long-term, practical, stocking and staffing solution. A growing majority of private schools across Australia have changed tack with their oncampus Uniform Store and handed over the running to an outsourced business that specialises in retail. In essence, a practical move that makes a lot of sense. Over the next couple of years, manufacturing of most uniform items will slowly move to Perm-a-Pleat sourced items, and with this comes a massive array of benefits – from a parent perspective as well as from the Schools. One of these benefits is size and colour consistency, a size 14 formal blue shirt will be the same size 14 house shirt or a size 14 jumper, and the navy blue of our uniforms will be the same across the board – not a mixture of navy blue, royal blue and/ or french blue! Another plus for our parents would be stock control. At the moment we are relying on over 20 different companies who have their own order and stock timelines. As many of our Preschool parents know, we fell foul of this once the cooler weather hit, and our current tracksuit supplier ordered and shipped the wrong sizes. With Perm-a-Pleat in control of stock and manufacturing, stock is automatically controlled by sales, and refill items will be shipped before items run low in The Store – thus items will never be out of stock! In this regard, TSS is also looking at our current uniform garments and ways in which they can be improved or consolidated, with both students wear and parents pockets in mind. Another improvement the P&F have introduced is locating the Second-Hand Store within the TSS Store so parents can peruse these items before making a choice of purchasing new. As part of this change, the School and P&F have confirmed that 100% of all proceeds from the sale of the second hand uniforms will now be directed to the School’s Indigenous program, facilitated by the support group Hand Up, who assist with supporting our Indigenous students. A most worthy cause.

We have a period of cross-over happening at the moment, and with this we can expect some teething problems, as is expected with periods of change. We hope these will be as brief and as trouble-free for our parents as possible, and look forward to a beneficial relationship with Perm-a-Pleat.