About Elizabeth Richards

Since 1986 Elizabeth Richards has been delivering bright ideas to classrooms around Australia. We are an independent, family-owned Australian business and wherever possible we source our products from similar Australian businesses.

Inspired beginnings

Book boxes! They are now found in the majority of classrooms around Australia, but have you ever wondered how they came about?

The original founder of Elizabeth Richards was a hard-working teacher. Back in 1986 the resourceful staff at her school use to ask students to bring in empty wine casks when their parents were finished, take the bladder out, cut the sides into the shape of what we now know as the book box and cover it in contact to hold it all together.

Our founder used to look at these fun but rough boxes and wonder if something could be made to help teachers organise their classrooms without the extra work of drinking the wine and converting the casks.

She sat down one day with a friend who ran a cardboard manufacturing company and based on the feedback from the staff and teachers at her school came up with a design for a "book box".

They made 100 samples and sent them out to 100 schools with a note along the lines of “here’s a book box - what do you think?” The answer from schools was overwhelmingly positive. 34 years later and thanks to all those creative teachers our range includes all sorts of book boxes - fluoro for the fashionable, black for the sophisticated and every other colour in between. Nothing beats an Elizabeth Richards Book Box as an affordable, easy and colourful way to organise your classroom.

And parents had to find other excuses for drinking a whole cask of wine....

Mission Statement

Our mission is to help educators create beautiful learning spaces... to deliver the very best in storage solutions, furniture and resources for schools, teachers and their classrooms. From book boxes to art dryers, furniture to inclusive resources, as well as maths and language we aspire to have everything you need to create an effective learning environment.

How do we do this?

We believe our products must cater to the unique requirements of the Australian classroom and to facilitate this we regularly run focus groups with Australian teachers to discuss new products and refine our existing product selection. We sponsor, support and attend educational and school conferences around Australia and our Educational Relations Managers in NSW, QLD and VIC are on the ground talking to schools every day about how we can best meet their needs.

Credentials

• Preferred supplier with the NSW and QLD Departments of Education.
• ISO 9001 certified.

ISO 9001 is an internationally recognised Quality Management System certification for companies who wish to deliver products and services of consistent quality, constantly exceeding their customer's expectations.

Sustainability

Elizabeth Richards cardboard products are made from recycled cardboard that has both PEFC and FSC certification. PEFC is the world's largest forest certification system that seeks to ensure forests are ethically managed. FSC has a global forest certification system to provide a guarantee that forest products come from responsibly managed sources.

In addition to this we strive for responsible business operations with sustainable practices wherever possible.

To achieve this we try to minimise our businesses carbon footprint by:

• Utilising recycled paper and cardboard in our product manufacturing
• Ensuring plastic products are as sturdy as possible to allow them to be re-used for years
• Minimising packaging as much as possible without compromising product quality.
• Recycling waste paper, cardboard and plastics both in our administrative offices and our warehouse and dispatch centre.

Social Advocacy

We currently sponsor over 20 disadvantaged Australian school children with regular financial support to pay for school essentials like uniforms, shoes, textbooks and excursions through the Smith Family Australia.