Oliver Bonas

Our story starts with our founder, Olly. His creative upbringing, culturally influenced by the many countries he lived in, instilled a love of design and an exploratory spirit from an early age. At university whilst studying Anthropology, Olly began to bring back gifts for friends from his travels abroad. He turned this into a small business and in 1993 the first store opened in London, repainted by his friends with Olly behind a second-hand till. Three decades on, we now have over 85 stores and have evolved from curating others’ designs to creating our own. At Oliver Bonas (OB), our values of Work Hard, Play Hard & Be Kind are integral to everything we do. Collaboration, imagination, curiosity, and teamwork are key to our success, and everyone has their part to play in making OB a special place to work. Having fun is key, and a playful and positive approach creates an optimistic environment. We don’t take ourselves too seriously, but we are serious about what we do. Our team knows their stuff. They’re confident and creative and unafraid to challenge convention to find solutions, taking accountability for their actions, but always with kindness and humility. Our promise is to do our bit to make living a joyful experience and give cause for optimism. This promise is central to our work in equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI). To bring joy to others, we must first ensure everyone at OB feels valued, included and most importantly, can be themselves at work. At company level, we have set out our approach to EDI with our Leadership team, who are committed to leading on all our initiatives and conveying that message across the business. We empower our managers to promote a sense of belonging within their teams. We also expect everyone at OB to value and look out for each other by always being considerate and mindful of others. To read more about commitments head over to our EDI page on our website