Christopher Nieper OBE DL
SUSAN AMBLER: We now come to our Honorary Award. These are awarded by the University in recognition of somebody who's made a very significant contribution in their particular field. I now have great pleasure in inviting Dr Matthew Day, Deputy Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Education, to give the commendation for the conferment of an Honorary Master of the University to Christopher Nieper.
Dr Day.
DR MATTHEW DAY: Vice-Chancellor, Pro Chancellor, Lord Lieutenant, Honoured guests, Graduands of 2025, and all our guests here today, it gives me great pleasure to be presenting Christopher Nieper OBE DL for the award of Honorary Master of the University. Christopher is a visionary entrepreneur, philanthropist and advocate for education and community development. He is chief executive of family fashion business, David Nieper Ltd, and founder and chair of the Christopher Nieper Education Trust, which is helping to boost young people's employability skills. He is also founder of the Christopher Nieper Foundation, which aims to rejuvenate deprived and left-behind towns across Britain.
Christopher was born and raised in Derbyshire. His entrepreneurial skills were evident at an early age when he started his own furniture repair business at the age of 18. The profits funded a trip to Antigua to work on racing boats. Unfortunately, it was hurricane season and the trip ended in a hitchhike back to UK with just £10 in his pocket.
Graduating in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Leeds in 1986, Christopher joined the family firm manufacturing women's fashion in Alfreton. Witnessing the decimation of British textiles as thousands of textile manufacturing jobs went offshore, the company remained loyal to British skills and now employs 250 local staff and has 100,000 regular customers. To help secure British textile skills, Christopher led the government trailblazer group to establish apprenticeship standards for the fashion sector.
The company has received wide recognition, attracting visits from Members of Parliament from both sides of the House and from Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal and her Royal Highness The Countess of Wessex. The firm received the Queen's Award for Sustainable Development in 2020, and the King's Award for Enterprise in Sustainable Development in 2025.
Christopher plans to make the factory the greenest in Europe. Energy is used sparingly, heat is recycled, nothing goes to landfill, and the energy consumed to make each garment is down to a third of the energy consumed to make comparable garments offshore.
In 2015, Christopher founded the Christopher Nieper Education Trust to address the performance of the town's only secondary school. Converting the school to David Nieper Academy, Christopher appointed a new headteacher, moved the school into a new building and donated a new uniform to every student. The school now has its highest Ofsted ranking ever, is the third most oversubscribed secondary school in Derbyshire, and every student leaving its sixth form last year secured a job, an apprenticeship or a place at university.
Christopher is dedicated to investing in Alfreton and its residents. Through the Christopher Nieper Foundation, formed during the pandemic, he is seeking to achieve lasting development in towns like Alfreton. The Foundation has established a community news hub, 'Spirit of Alfreton', which has given the University's journalism students the chance to investigate and publish local news stories and promote community businesses. The University and the Foundation now operate a strategic partnership, with the aim to work on collaborative research and development projects, identify opportunities for external funding, and support other towns in developing their own sense of community. For the last 12 years, Christopher has sponsored our BA (Hons) Fashion and Textiles programme with annual projects, prizes and awards.
Christopher was awarded the OBE in the Queen's New Year's Honours in 2020, for services to British manufacturing and apprenticeship development. He has been serving the region as a Deputy Lieutenant for the county of Derbyshire since 2021.
Christopher is joined by his family today to celebrate his notable contributions to the region.
Vice-Chancellor, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to manufacturing and education in the region, we are delighted to award Christopher Nieper the Honorary Degree of Master of the University.
CHRISTOPHER NIEPER: Well, I don't know how I reply to that. Well, Vice-Chancellor, Pro Chancellor, Lord Lieutenant, Honoured guests, graduands of 2025, and all our guests here today. Welcome.
It's my great pleasure to be with you and celebrate your success. And thank you very much for that extremely generous citation. I must say, graduands, you have worked extremely hard to get this far and I do wish you every success in your future life, and particularly the next adventure, as I'm sure it will be.
It's very kind of you to mention, I had an adventure when I was perhaps your age, when I was 19, I travelled in my gap year actually, before I went to university, and I hitched from Antigua in the West Indies, across the Atlantic on sailing boats with just £10 in my pocket. That was a mistake, by the way. But mobile phones didn't exist and I didn't have a credit card anyway. I travelled 6500 miles on that £10 note from the West Indies over land and sea, working my passage. It was an adventure, and several months later I arrived home with £20 in my pocket!
I must say, I've never looked back on the life skills it gave me, and I hope that some of you will have an adventure like that as well, if you're not already doing that.
Now, I understand, we are amongst the College of Arts. Lots of you have got arts, wonderful arts degrees today and humanities and education. And so I'm going to talk about arts and education, which are the two things that are relevant really for me. My family, Nieper is an unusual name. My grandfather was born in Leipzig in Eastern Germany, and his history and my mother's family side are full of artists and musicians. And I can assure you that it is possible to make a success out of art. And of course, in our case, out of fashion. And it can be really rewarding if you enjoy doing what you do and apply your creative flare. And most importantly, if you work with people you admire.
Well, of course, it's not actually been easy every day and not everything has gone right for me. In fact, plenty has gone wrong. But if you keep pursuing your dream, as your Vice-Chancellor mentioned, with passion and energy, you will find success and possibly in areas you've never imagined. And I hope one day you'll surprise yourself, and at least one of you may be standing here like me, to receive an honour like this.
Well, your degree, your university degree is a fabulous piece of paper to open doors, and that's what it does. But once you get your first job, you'll need something else to progress. And that something else is employability skills. Thank you, Vice-Chancellor, for mentioning that in your in your address. Academic success and employability skills are in fact two sides of the same coin when it comes to careers. So, your Institute of Education is here and I hope the educationalists amongst you will agree with me that employability skills are equally important, and especially for progression into more senior roles. And I say that because all organisations are run by people and the most successful organisations are those with the best people, and it's people that make this a great university, and it's people who've enabled my family company to survive for 60 years, manufacturing fashion in Britain, where nearly all fashion has gone offshore. We've done it against the odds by working with local people.
Well, it is easy, of course, to talk about employability skills and less easy to define them, let alone teach them. But this is exactly what has kindled my interest in education, and it's what underpins our schools and our fashion company. So, if I may dare to define it, we think leaders and achievers of the future will have a sense of urgency, a willingness to keep improving, a can do, will do attitude, and humility. Now, I'm sure you all have all these qualities already, and you also have valuable friends and contacts who you've made here in Derby. So, please keep in touch with them. Keep in touch with those people who inspire you. Try and meet their friends and their contacts and through that you should find opportunity. You need good people around you. So they say if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
Well, when I was your age, I could never have imagined leading a business or starting an education trust with hundreds of staff and thousands of pupils. I could never have imagined starting my own foundation, and I certainly never imagined I would be one day standing here in front of you.
I was absolutely thrilled to receive a letter from the Vice-Chancellor, your wonderful Vice-Chancellor, inviting me to accept this honour. And it's very special to be recognised by this great university in our own home county of Derbyshire. I'm humbled and I'm truly honoured by this great privilege. My life since university has given me not just opportunities, it's made me a better person, and I've learnt not to be put off by the naysayers. And I encourage you to not be put off either. If you have ambition on an idea, just go for it and make it work.
So, I'm just going to finish with a story about a bumble bee. The scientists say it should be impossible for the bumble bee to fly. Apparently the combination of its comparatively large, heavy body and its very short wings mean it shouldn't be able to fly. But the bumble bee, unaware of this scientific advice, just goes ahead and flies anyway.
Thank you.
Christopher Nieper's commendation video
Back to Christopher Nieper OBE DL