YOU can see its products every time you walk into Boots. And you'll probably catch sight of the odd one if you settle down in front of the TV on a Saturday night and watch Casualty. Even His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent has one.
On top of that, it's a business that turns over around £4 million a year and employs more than 80 people – many of them from families who live nearby.
Not bad for a business that started life in a sub-let portable building in Hucknall after an accountant had warned its founder that it would never make any money.
But the founder in question, John Bancroft, is not one to take no for an answer. An experienced sales and marketing man, he knew the demand was there because would-be customers had asked him, and he worked out a way of making it pay.
His business is Badgemaster and it does pretty much what it says on the tin, supplying two million identity name badges a year to thousands of customers, who range from high street giants like Boots to hotels, banks, office supplies businesses, corporate clothing companies, travel agents, airlines and even the Royal Household. Hence this small business in an old Notts mining village has the "By Appointment to Her Majesty The Queen" Royal Warrant welcoming visitors when they walk through the door.
And John himself has a particularly special badge of his own: an MBE. Not a badge he wears to work but one he's nevertheless immensely proud of.
"When we were notified that I was being recommended – and I always say 'we' because as far as I'm concerned it's a joint effort from everyone here – it came completely out of the blue.
"It means a lot to us because there are two things I'm proud of – we're a Notts business employing Notts people. All the people we employ are from the area, most from the immediate vicinity, and the majority ex-mining families. Many of the girls once used to work in textiles, which is another industry that's largely gone.
"What gives us all enormous pride is that when we go out shopping, go to the bank, go on holiday or watch programmes like Casualty they see people wearing name badges that have nearly always been made here."
John Bancroft has been wearing the badge with pride for exactly 21 years this month. As the national sales manager of Sketchley's corporate clothing and workwear division, he had seen increasing numbers of clients asking for name badges to go with uniforms.
These are tiny products but every single one is different, and businesses were struggling to find efficient ways of sourcing them. John knew the demand was there and reckoned he knew how to meet it quickly, efficiently and cheaply.
While he was full of enthusiasm, professional advisers weren't, telling John that raising an invoice would cost more than he could sell the product for. John was having none of it: "Someone once told me that you should get the best possible professional advice, take it on board, and then follow your heart. Not one, single solitary adviser that I approached thought it was a good idea."
His accountant also pointed out that he'd need to find premises and would have to sign up for a lease that might lumber him with big bills for years.
So he started out letting part of a portable building, with wife Vicky helping out when she wasn't working full time in a medical centre.
It was a hand-to-mouth existence to start with, the business turning over £38,000 in its first year. "I used to brew my own beer instead of going to the pub," says John. "I gave up smoking and I even repaired my shoes with the glue we used to stick pins on the badges. It got quite tough."
But his contacts in corporate clothing and his wife's in healthcare gave them a way in to some influential customers. The result? The business began to take off, attracting customers like Boots and Raleigh. Inevitably, it outgrew its portable building.
It moved just up the road to Newstead, the mining village that had been hit hard by the decline of the pits and textiles. There, the council had built 10 small industrial units in the hope of providing local employment and Badgemaster took one of them.
"When we put all our stuff down inside it, we looked lost," recalls John. "I really thought we'd taken on something way too big. But within a year, it was crammed to the gills and we were sharing desks."
A decade on, Badgemaster occupies all 10 units. Ranged in two terraces either side of a yard, they are set up like a production line, with design and manufacture in one terrace and the dispatching and office functions in the other.
John doesn't pretend there's any dark secret to the firm's success: "We've just stayed focused on our vision that every customer's badge is designed specifically for them so that it is projecting their brand and their corporate image as well as enabling their staff, customers, visitors and guests to recognise them by name."
Badgemaster today has all the normal business processes – accounts, order processing, dispatching, invoice chasing, etc. But there is also a graphic design team and specialist printers and engravers operating hi-tech machinery in which Badgemaster has invested hundreds of thousands of pounds.
The investment has paid dividends. The business has 20,000 individual accounts, of which more than half will have placed orders within the past six months. Around a third of production (which totals around 10,000 badges a day) will go to badge re-sellers in the stationery trade and the workwear industry – a major growth area for the business.
John admits it hasn't all been plain sailing. While the business enjoyed near-continuous growth between 1992 and 2008, the financial crisis saw sales fall 15 per cent as industries like retail, travel and hospitality recruited fewer people. Some good customers – among them the likes of Focus and Woolworths – simply disappeared. John said: "We had to make half-a-dozen people redundant and that was a horrible experience because we love our people – we've got fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives working here."
When business picked up again in 2011-12, the first thing John did was contact the people who had been made redundant and take some of them back on again.
It isn't just the Royal Crest that gives John a sense of pride. The business holds two key industrial standards – ISO 9001 for quality and ISO 14001 for environmental practice – which open doors with customers. And, like many family-owned enterprises, it is financially conservative.
"We have never, ever borrowed a penny," John says emphatically. "Beyond the buildings, where we have a very good landlord in Gedling Borough Council, nothing here is leased or on credit. My wife and I are old-fashioned folk from St Ann's and if you can't afford it, you do without and if you need it, you wait until you have got the money."
They also take an uncomplicated approach to the business's future: "We've never asked ourselves where we want to be in five years. We try to provide the customer service, care and attention that ensures we don't lose customers, and we market ourselves hard to get new ones.
"We have a consistent and manageable level of growth and that has enabled us to reinvest our profits in new equipment, new technology, systems and procedures."
As a Royal Warrant holder, Badgemaster is part of a select group of businesses whose calling card says something special. Along with other members of the Royal Warrant Holders' Association, John found himself manning a stand about his business at Buckingham Palace only a few days ago for the Coronation Festival.
"I was a Sunday morning and the stand was quiet for about an hour. And as I was standing there, I realised that it was the first time in 21 years that time had dragged in business.
"But I'm not complaining – I'm a lucky man. And after that, of course, it got very busy and all hell broke loose!"