About Us

INDEPENDENT SALES & MARKETING SINCE 1919

Specialists in e-commerce, distribution and gifting for brands

LINKING PEOPLE WITH BRANDS

Home to Voucher Express, Vex Rewards, Cadbury Gifts Direct, Green & Black’s and your first destination for both UK and international business gifts.

Hemingways is a specialist e-commerce, sales and distribution company representing a wide range of major UK and international brands, promoting and selling their products to consumers and corporate markets.

The company is independently owned & managed and has traded since 1947. It’s heritage traces back to 1919.

A RICH HISTORY

Hemingways takes its name from the company’s founder John Hemingway who started his family business at the end of the first World War issuing Star Credit Checks – an early form of gift vouchers. During the 1960’s and 1970’s Hemingways operated furniture and department stores in Yorkshire and began marketing and distributing confectionery during the 1980’s, initially to sectors such as credit finance and dairy industries.

Originally based in Leeds, the company now operates from sites in Ripon, Wetherby and Amsterdam. The company employs over 170 people, and over 300 during peak trading. Hemingways is recognised as one of the fastest growing private companies in the North with turnover exceeding £200m.

SOLUTIONS FOR BRANDS AND RETAILERS

We remain an independent company operating in a number of niche markets, primarily retail gift vouchers, gift cards and branded confectionery. In all cases our operations involve working nationally with big brands and high volume sales.

Operations now include wholesale and consumer sales for Cadbury and Green & Black’s, white label gift voucher and gift card solutions for over 50 major UK and international retailers; corporate fulfilment services via our dedicated handling operation – Vex Rewards, The Gift List – an online wedding and gift list service and consumer and corporate voucher sales via Voucher Express.

A TECHNOLOGY COMPANY

Alongside our established e-commerce activities, the company also operates a number of SaaS solutions with a particular focus on the Retail sector. Solutions include platforms used to manage Customer Service and Refunds processes; and bespoke Gift Card Management Platforms.

Hemingways own Bliss Systems Ltd, a specialist software development agency and Professional Services company. Bliss, a Microsoft Gold Partner, is based in Oxford and Leeds.

A FAST GROWING COMPANY

Hemingways Group Holdings Ltd ranks 21th in the list of fastest growing private companies in the Yorkshire region based on turnover figures from 2019 to 2021, appearing for a second year running in the Ward Hadaway’s Top50 listings for Yorkshire. The company also currently ranks 128th in Business Insider’s top 500 best-performing, biggest companies in Yorkshire and the Humber.

Read this Yorkshire Post feature from May 2023 with our MD Andrew Johnson explaining what this recognition means to the company.

AN ACCREDITED COMPANY

High standards sit at the heart of all our activities. We continually strive to be the very best we can be with regard to our processes concerning data management and security; and to continually deliver on the highest quality for our products and services, delivery and customer care.

Hemingways holds full ISO27001 accreditation; BRC Storage & Distribution accreditation as well as RSQS and Cyber Essential marks covering data security and management.