CELEBRATING 75+ YEARS IN BUSINESS

Shop your favourite brands on our website including L'Oreal, Wella, Matrix, Schwarzkopf and IdHAIR UK. We also have 5 stores located in the North of England with our head office located in Darlington. To learn more about us please read our history and journey of over 75 years.

1946

Trade Hair Supplies was founded in 1946 and was originally known as Ray & Company Hairdressers Sundriesmen Ltd. Our current managing director, Garth Sliufko, is the son of one of the founding members, Ray Sliufko, who started the business with his brother Maurice in Clarks Yard, Darlington. In those days we delivered products to salons from suitcases following train journeys to local towns and cities.

1966

This was the year we opened our new head office premises in Green Street Darlington. This same year, we also housed our sister company Radyiant Chemical Company Ltd. Which has now moved to a specialist facility in Newton Aycliffe in 1990 under the new name of Tricogen Laboratories. Housed at Green Street, this came the introduction of a direct sales force using vans as transport rather than catching trains. 

1966-2014

The company expanded in the following years with the introduction of the Middlesbrough store in 1972, followed by Gateshead Team Valley in 1986. The Carlisle store opened in 1994 and then relocated to larger premises under Trade Hair Supplies in 2014. The last store we opened was our Sunderland branch in May 2010 as Trade Hair Supplies.

Trade Hair Supplies has also developed overseas with Swedish operation commencing in January 2004. We have two branches in Gothenburg and Malmo with a direct sales team covering Stockholm and Gothenburg from 2013. 

2016

After 50 years in Green Street, in 2016 we moved our headquarters to Yarm Road Business Park, Darlington under our new name: Trade Hair Supplies.

It is now one of the largest hairdressing wholesale stores in the UK and it is also our main warehouse for online orders and a distribution centre for each branch. Our headquarters also has a dedicated conference and training facility enabling us to provide a full education portfolio to salons.

2017

In February 2017 we became the sole UK importer and distributor for the Danish brand: IdHAIR. Labelled as IdHAIR UK. This brand has taken the UK by storm with continuous growth throughout the last three years. In 2022 we plan to relaunch IdHAIR UK with a dedicated website and new imagery and point of sale to UK salons. 

2021 

Our Middlesbrough store had an upgrade in 2021 and each branch is now named Trade Hair Supplies (no longer Ray & Co).

Since Covid-19, Trade Hair Supplies has continued to develop and evolve as a company to support and offer only the best for our northeast and nationwide customers. This included launching our online shop in 2020 with an upgraded website in February 2022. Built to allow the best possible shopping experience!

2023 -

In late 2023 we re-launched our THS website to the Shopify platform to offer our customers the ability to shop and track orders over an app. We also installed a new point of sale system to all 5 stores for a seamless operation from ordering to delivery. We are continuing to invest in our marketing department to grow our stores and online presence. 

Our THS family

A key strength of Trade Hair Supplies is our team of committed people. Employee length of service is a great indicator of a good company to work for and we have this in abundance.

We had Angie, previously operations manager in Darlington with Trade Hair Supplies for 52 years before her retirement in late 2022. Our longest-serving employee. Our Middlesbrough store manager Lee has been with us for over 38 years and our Gateshead store manager Caroline 33 years.

We had three key members of our team celebrating 25 years’ service in 2021: Neil our Carlisle store manager, Kevin in our Darlington store and Sue our delivery driver for the Teesside and North Yorkshire area.

We are constantly evolving as a company but will never deviate from our core values of being a customer-focused, family-owned, local company.

Thank you for reading and don't forget to keep in touch with us via our socials.