time when Tasmania’s textile and retail landscape looked vastly different to today. It was also an extraordinary period to join Sheridan. The company was expanding into bed linen and invested heavily in its Hobart manufacturing operation, where its workforce eventually grew to around 550 people. Trevor grew with the company for nine years before a major decision changed the course of his career. When Sheridan moved away from employing its own representatives, Trevor was offered the opportunity to become an independent agent.
once filled with independent Tasmanian stores, while Australian textile manufacturing was also undergoing enormous change as factories closed and production shifted offshore. For Trevor, adapting meant looking beyond the retail market that had sustained the business. “We decided to go into the commercial area rather than retail,” he says. “From the early 80s we were servicing hospitality and healthcare with textiles, sheets and doonas and pillows, and then we expanded our range into other products.” That shift would help shape Oakley Textiles for the next four decades, including a move to its current North Hobart premises (below) in the mid-80s.
Today the business is part of the Alliance Textiles buying group, continuing as a distributor for Actil Commercial while its range has expanded well beyond linen, including beds and an increasing number of products for accommodation operators. It has also grown into a business turning over millions annually, with a large showroom and warehouse operation backed by a remarkably stable team. Trevor’s son and daughter are part of the business, while other staff have been there for more than two decades. “We haven’t changed our staff for 20 years,” Trevor says. “We work on the fact that we give excellent service, we stock a really good range of commercial quality product, and we deliver quickly.” Over the decades, Oakley Textiles has become closely intertwined with Tasmania’s hospitality industry, growing alongside accommodation operators and adapting as the way they do business has changed.
“I was still pretty young, and it was a little bit nerve- racking, but I knew the sales were going [up], so I became an agent,” he said. It would not be the last time Trevor had to back himself. He later purchased the former Hobart Club building on the corner of Argyle and Bathurst streets, establishing his own showroom and offices and building Oakley Agencies around the retail linen market. But as Trevor’s business grew, the industry around it began changing.
Large retailers increasingly dominated a market
25 Tasmanian Hospitality Review August/September Edition
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