After graduating in law from the University of Manchester, Raj qualified as a barrister and is a member of the Middle Temple.

He honed is business skills whilst studying for an MBA from the Manchester Business School and is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School.

Raj worked as an international tax specialist at Arthur Andersen in London and Pricewaterhouse in Paris prior to joining the family textile business in 1987. Raj is the managing director of Richard Haworth, supplier of hospitality textiles in the UK, a company founded in 1876. Richard Haworth continues to manufacture bed linen in its stateof- the-art hemming unit in Lancashire.

Raj is also a director of the Ruia Group, a second generation family-owned textile company with a turnover of c.£100m. One of the largest individually owed textile groups in the UK which includes the Sock Shop as one of its well-known brands.

He is actively involved in community affairs and served as chairman of the Strategic Economic Partnership in Bolton and was responsible for rebrand of Bolton. He has been a trustee of the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester and more recently HOME in Manchester. Raj also established the Manchester Chapter of TiE, which is a leading global organisation for entrepreneurs.

Raj is an active member of the Textiles Services Association (TSA) and has served as a board member. He also sits on the board of Tate Enterprises and the advisory board at the Tate Liverpool. Raj is married to Reshma Ruia, a published author who has just published to much acclaim “Still Lives”. They have two children – Sabrina and Ravi. Ravi has recently joined the business as the new business development manager at Richard Haworth, serving the London hospitality market.

On careers in the industry …

It was an impromptu visit to a trade fair in Paris that drew me into the industry. I was working in Paris as a tax accountant. My brothers were visiting and encouraged me to join them at a textiles trade fair. It was an eye opener to an industry I knew nothing about but saw as the career changing opportunity I needed at the time. I joined the family business in a management role. It was both a baptism of fire and a challenge at the same time. Within the first few months I managed to lose us a key NHS tender. Something that had never happened before. I quickly learnt from that and moved on.

When it comes to developing our own people, I always aim to hire and promote from within the business or the industry. I have a belief that if people are hardworking, loyal and understand the values of an organisation, then they can adapt to a role and grow. You can train people on textiles, but they need to come with the right attitude when they approach areas like customer service and a drive for continuous improvement.

Our general manager, Shaun Colderley, started out in our warehouse despatching goods. Our marketing manager, David Stockton, joined as a data analyst. Chris Kingsford, our senior sales manager, has a wealth of experience and started in the industry running a laundry in Liverpool. Almost 50 per cent of our colleagues have been with the company for over 10 years. We also train from within and support the development of our people – creating bespoke initiatives to drive recruitment in areas where there are skills shortages. We are a people business and still very much need and want to employ people. Just last month we launched an event to teach local people how to sew in an effort to combat a sewing skills shortage and train up the next generation to work on our hemming and sewing stations.

I was delighted to be able to collaborate within the industry to make the relevant connections with colleagues to help prison leavers find employment in our sector. When you get involved in this industry you realise it’s a serious business. It’s not just about laundry. It’s about logistics, engineering, technology, chemicals, finance, marketing … and so much more. As an industry we are doing a better job in sharing wider what we do. But there’s more to be done.

I have a belief that if people are hardworking, loyal
and understand the values of an organisation,
then they can adapt to a role and grow.

On industry developments …

Almost thirty years ago, Richard Haworth was appointed by Milliken to distribute VISA, a 100 per cent polyester napery product in the UK. In the intervening 30 years, polyester table linen has become the industry norm.

Some of our key developments, like our Prima cotton rich bed linen range, were the first of their kind in the hospitality industry and have now become industry standards. Polyester delivers huge benefits. With 60:40 or 70:30 cotton to polyester mix ratios it created a lighter fabric and in turn reduced drying time and improved colour fastness.

Continuous improvement is core to what we do. It was our idea many years ago, through feedback from working with housekeepers, to introduce hand holes into our duvet covers. It makes their work easier and more efficient.

On sustainability and ethics …

We are ISO 9001 and 14001 Certified which I believe is just a starting point in our commitment to sustainability.

We demonstrate our dedication right through the organisation. Starting with our UK sites we have installed solar panels on the roofs of some of our mills. We have introduced recycled plastic for our packaging and biodegradable packaging on our consumable items such as slippers. We are in the process of changing all our lighting to LED in our manufacturing facility in Manchester – this is no small job as our site is a 240,000 square foot Victorian mill.

However, our supply chain starts right back at the cotton fields. As members of the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) we are firm supporters of responsible cotton production. The BCI supports cotton growers, educating them in water use and soil health for example, working with them to improve their yields.

There’s lots that can be done in the transportation stage to make that part of the supply chain more sustainable. By introducing bale packaging, it means that we can pack more towels in a bale so there’s less to transport – less freight weight. We’re also looking at compressed packaging methods to make even further improvements. Ethics and supporting responsible and fair working conditions is also extremely important to me and how we do business. As such, we are part of the Ethical Trading initiative (ETI) and Sedex. Pre-Covid, we actively visited our mills to walk the talk and carry out quality checks and audits. For example, are our partner mills meeting fire regulations? Are the people working there respected and looked after? In the recent years of global travel restrictions we’ve been using partner companies and third parties to help us keep checks on the quality and conditions at our mills. Now we are starting to make more frequent visits ourselves to our global mill sites so we can see our operations first-hand.

On industry collaboration …

For many years we’ve worked and collaborated with the industry and are a Premium Supply Partner with the TSA, committed to supporting and developing relationships and knowledge sharing with others in the industry.

My four sales managers and myself have 190 years of industry experience between us! That’s a lot of contacts we’ve built over the years to cement some great working relationships with people and businesses right across the industry. I am passionate about textiles and about the laundry industry.