A UK graduation wear company on a mission to make every moment unforgettable.
Visit EVESS Group →Martin Lewis founded EVESS Group on the day he graduated. He'd spent years watching the graduation ceremony happen to students, and felt it was missing something — a real sense of moment. So he decided to build it himself.
Today, EVESS works with universities across the UK to deliver graduation experiences built around technology, sustainability, and emotion. Their RFID-chipped gowns deliver a graduate's professional photo to their seat in under 10 seconds of crossing the stage. Their gowns are carbon-neutral — verifiably, defensibly so.
The ambition is clear: grow from $10M to $25M in revenue, and keep making moments that matter.
With Epic on hand, we get knowledgeable minds guiding us through everything — from negotiating minimum order quantities, to sorting ocean freight and managing imports. It really has made our life so much easier.
Martin Lewis — CEO, EVESS Group
Martin first reached out to Epic nearly 10 years ago — fresh out of university, with a bold idea and no supply chain. The decision to partner with Epic was all about on-the-ground expertise in China. EVESS needed a team who could navigate factories, negotiate terms, manage quality, and solve the inevitable problems that arise when you're two continents from your manufacturer.
Epic sourced and vetted manufacturers across China capable of meeting EVESS's exacting standards for gown quality, safety, and consistency.
From minimum order quantities to pricing terms, Epic helped EVESS negotiate commercially sound agreements that protected their margins as they scaled.
Epic's QC team visited factories to inspect production runs first-hand, ensuring every gown met the standards EVESS promises their university clients.
Epic conducted a deep-domain supply chain carbon analysis across all EVESS production lines — enabling the company to offset emissions and market genuinely carbon-neutral gowns.
Martin visits factories in China at least once a year. Epic coordinates and accompanies these trips, ensuring the relationship with manufacturers is tight and the production process continually improves.
Epic manages end-to-end freight for EVESS — getting product from Chinese factories to UK universities reliably, on time, and at the right price.
Q. You started EVESS on the day you graduated. What did you see that others were missing?
Every graduation ceremony is built around function — you cross the stage, you get your photo taken, you leave. We asked: what if every touchpoint created an emotional reaction instead? The RFID chip in our gowns means a graduate's professional photo reaches their family's seat in under 10 seconds of them crossing the stage. That's the difference between a transaction and a memory.
Q. Growing a business from $1M to $10M is no small feat. What was the hardest part of that journey?
Supply chain. We're two continents away from our factories, and there are problems left, right, and centre when you're scaling manufacturing. Having Epic as our partner meant we had a team with genuine execution ability — people who could solve problems on the ground in China so we could focus on growing the business at home.
Q. You've made it to your 10th factory trip in China. What's changed about how you approach those visits?
In the early days I was just trying to understand what was happening. Now I know our factories well, I know the people, and I go to push. To push quality, to push innovation, to push the relationship forward. Epic makes those visits productive — they know what questions to ask and what to look for in a way I simply didn't have at the start.
Q. How would you describe the relationship with Epic after nearly a decade?
I've always seen it not as a contract, but as a relationship. Something that our company and Epic Sourcing have grown together. The relationship between us and Epic is inseparable — I genuinely cannot imagine where EVESS would be without them.
When Martin first reached out to Epic, EVESS was a start-up with a great idea and no supply chain. A decade later, it's a $10 million business with a verifiable carbon-neutral product range, cutting-edge RFID technology built into every gown, and a supply chain it can genuinely rely on.
With Epic's supply chain muscle behind them, EVESS has set its sights on $25 million — and the infrastructure to get there is already in place.
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