Office & Customer Operations Manager – Garment Decoration and Print

We’re hiring an Office & Customer Operations Manager to join Fifth Column in Tottenham Hale.

This is a senior, hands-on role for someone who enjoys managing people, improving how a busy operation works and still staying close to customers and the day-to-day commercial side of the business.

Fifth Column has been producing decorated garments in London since 1977. Today we specialise in screen printing, embroidery and HD digital printing for brands, breweries, music merchandise companies, agencies, charities and businesses across the UK.

We’re now looking for someone to take ownership of our customer-facing office operation.

What the role involves

You’ll manage the office team, workloads and performance, but this isn’t a purely supervisory position.

You’ll also:

• Handle customer enquiries and prepare quotations

• Manage key or more complex customer opportunities

• Support the team with pricing and customer decisions

• Make sure enquiries are responded to quickly

• Monitor outstanding quotations and follow them up

• Help improve quote conversion and customer retention

• Oversee order processing and accuracy

• Work closely with production on deadlines and priorities

• Deal with customer escalations

• Improve systems, workflows and accountability

• Monitor practical KPIs around enquiries, quotes, follow-ups and workload

• Coach the team and address performance issues where necessary

We’re looking for someone who naturally takes ownership.

Someone who sees a problem and works out how to fix it.

Someone who asks:

What needs doing? Who owns it? When will it be completed?

About you

You’ll ideally have experience managing a small customer-facing team and be comfortable with both the people-management and commercial sides of the role.

You should be:

• Organised and commercially aware

• Comfortable managing performance

• Confident dealing with customers and difficult conversations

• Able to prioritise in a busy environment

• Happy to remain hands-on when required

• Interested in improving processes rather than simply maintaining them

• Comfortable learning new systems and ways of working

Experience in printing, garment decoration, promotional merchandise or manufacturing would be very useful, but strong management ability and commercial judgement are more important.

Package

£45,000–£50,000 depending on experience

Full-time, permanent

Monday to Friday

Office-based in Tottenham Hale, London

This role would suit someone currently working as an Office Manager, Customer Service Manager, Operations Manager, Account Management Team Leader or similar who wants genuine responsibility within an established independent manufacturing business.

If this sounds like you, we’d be very happy to hear from you.