AN OUTDOOR clothing business which plants a tree for every order sold has been ranked one of the UK’s fastest-growing online brands.

Passenger, founded by husband-and-wife team Richard and Alexa Sutcliffe, saw sales more than quadruple from 2019 to £11million in 2021.

The New Milton-based business is aiming for sales of £100m in the next five years after sales boomed in the UK, North America, Germany and around the world.

It came third in the Lightning 50, a list of the UK’s fastest-growing e-commerce brands created by the retail operating system Brightpearl.

Mr Sutcliffe, 39, said: “We are thrilled to be named one of the UK’s fastest growing online brands by Brightpearl.

“It is great that so many customers are coming to us from all over the world that share our love of escapism and outdoor living.

“We are a responsible company which makes outdoor clothes which are great for everyday wear and enable you to get out for your own escapism where we all unplug to recharge in today’s busy, always-on world.

“We realised early on that if we were going to build a brand based on sustainability and outdoor living, then we had to give back more to the environment than we take and that has been rooted in our DNA from day one.”

The business updates its website every month with the number of trees it has planted. The number currently stands at 385,193.

It plants indigenous species and works with environmental partners around the world, including in the rain forests in South America.

Mr Sutcliffe said: “We choose our partners quite carefully so that we are planting the right trees in the right places. We need to give a true voice to the customer. Every year there is a vast acreage of rain forest we are trying to protect and sustain.”

Mr Sutcliffe – who lives near the New Milton HQ with wife Alexa and their five-year-old daughter Alexa – brought in business partners Justin Stone and Jon Lane in 2018, to help run the business as executive chair and chief executive.

Passenger employs 25 people and has plans to open warehouses around the world as direct-to-consumer and wholesale sales grow.

Passenger brought in Bristol-based Brightpearl to run its multi-channel retail operation earlier this year.

Mr Sutcliffe said: “We delivered over £11m as a direct to consumer business but we knew that we needed a platform component that would enable us to manage both wholesale and direct to consumer sales as well as future proof the business for our global expansion with stock in multiple locations.

“That is where Brightpearl came in. We knew we needed to bring an ERP (enterprise resource planning) solution to manage that and we knew we didn’t have that in our existing tech stack.

“We got Brightpearl live in just 80 days – faster than the planned 100 day implementation – and it has been working for us for two months and it has been terrific.”

The full Brightpearl list can be found at brightpearl.com/lightning-50