Rajan & Sanjay Kumar, Managing Directors, Whispering Smith
I am Rajan Kumar and this is my brother Sanjay Kumar and we run Whispering Smith. We sell fashion clothing to a lot of the well known names on the High Street and online retailers globally. We have been going now for half a century.
I joined in 1981. My brother joined in 1990 and then my kids joined us so it is a third generation business now. You know Manchester has always been historically a great hot bed of talent for design. There is a lot of creativity out here. Barclays has been with us from day one and they really understand the new nuances and the idiosyncrasies of our business.
Matt Ryan, Relationship Director, Barclays
They've had an accounting relationship with Barclays since the 1960s and then, about five years ago, we won the full, relationship banking which saw us provide Letters of Credit, quite significant lines to enable them to import from the Far East, plus foreign exchange services, multicurrency overdraft and other day-to-day transactional banking.
Matt
It’s personally brilliant to work with clients like Whispering Smith, 'cause even though they've been trading for over half a century, they're still receptive to new ideas, innovation. It feels like we're working in partnership.
Rajan & Sanjay
They are our silent partner, you know that is the best type of partnership you can have.
Matt
They're entrepreneurial at heart, they love the business, they've worked hard to develop brands that are globally recognised, but they're still true to the North West. They have some really exciting times ahead of them and hopefully Barclays can help them achieve what they want to achieve.
