Thousands of people see Ashtree Glass products around the city every day – but don’t realise it.

In fact, very few people locally have heard of the firm – not least the judges of the T&A Bradford Means Business awards.

The firm’s twin success in winning the Medium/Large Business of the Year category and then being named winner of winners, thrust the company into the spotlight.

Ashtree’s founder and managing director Alan Roper admitted he only entered the awards at the last minute. But the firm’s story impressed the panel, who agreed they had discovered one of Bradford’s hidden business jewels.

Based in a former dyehouse off Thornton Road, Ashtree Glass has become the UK’s leading niche supplier of rear view mirrors, brackets and arms for buses – that’s where you’ll see them locally – and other vehicles such as forklift trucks, construction equipment (customers include JCB) and for military use.

Launched 33 years ago in the former Ashtree pub at Thornton, the business has made a net profit every year since. The last five years have seen record sales and net profits, year on year.

Alan, an accountant, keeps a tight rein on the money, and the result is that Ashtree has a healthy bank balance of more than £500,000.

Some of this has been earmarked for a planned extension of up to 10,000 sq ft at the firm’s 40,000 sq ft base in Brownroyd Street, which Alan bought in 1984 for £46,000.

In a glass case behind his desk, in which the two T&A awards trophies are also displayed, Alan has a collection of model buses. His interest in the vehicles started as a child when his mother was a bus conductress and sometimes took him with her to work.

“Our focus of producing mirrors for buses stems out of that interest and has always been central to the business,” said Alan, who runs the business along with son John, who started on the shop floor where, according to his father, he became the best glass-cutter in the firm.

Ashtree makes a range of mirrors in all shapes and sizes for different bus types, as well as four ranges of mirror arms, including one which can be set to any single degree, allowing the mirror to be mounted close to the side of the bus to help reduce accidental damage.

The company, which employs 26 people, including four members of the Roper family, is now the UK market leader in bus mirrors, with every British bus builder being a customer.

Ashtree, which exports about 40 per cent of its output, including to Germany, where its main rival is based, and now manufactures the widest range of commercial rear view mirrors in Europe. Last year it produced more than 170,000 complete mirrors, nearly 80,000 replacement glasses and lenses and more than 40,000 mirror arms.

One of its latest innovations is a ‘front view’ mirror which enables drivers of large vehicles such as coaches and HGVs to see obstacles immediately in front of their cabs. Its design was prompted by an incident involving an HGV vehicle which pushed a car along the A1 without the driver being aware that it was there.

“Blind spots are a real problem for drivers of larger vehicles, and we’ve developed a front view mirror to tackle the visibility issue,” said Alan.

Ashtree Glass originally bought and sold replacement mirror glasses for truck mirrors, but a demand for complete mirrors and replacement glasses from the same company led it into production, initially using outworkers.

Originally run from a spare room at Alan’s home, the company later outgrew two rented properties before the current factory was bought. Since then the factory has been totally refurbished so that only the four outer walls of the original building remain.

In 1989, a major development was the acquisition of the former Desmo mirror business, with production being moved to Bradford.

Ashtree’s main marketing drive is through trade exhibitions at home and abroad. Alan and John have been attending two major shows at the NEC in Birmingham last week and this. Last year the company participated at eight exhibitions, including three in Germany and one in France. A further eight have been booked in 2011, including one in Sweden, which Alan regards as ripe for development.

“We are a business-to-business supplier and that’s why showing at exhibitions and building contacts there is important to us. We don’t have a trade counter or deal with the public, which is probably why few people have heard of us locally. Our nearest customer is Optare bus builders in Leeds,” said Alan.

Cut-price competition in the truck after-market led Ashtree to seek other markets and this led to mirrors and equipment for construction equipment, agriculture and forklift trucks.

Customers gained at exhibitions include JCB, Linde forklift trucks, Komatsu, Atlas and JLG telehandlers.

Alan had his first experience of the glass industry with the former Applied Art Glass in Bradford and later trained as an accountant and became finance director there.

Always willing to learn, the lifelong Bradford City fan attended night school in the early 1990s to learn commercial German in a bid to win more business there. Exports are now worldwide to markets including Australasia, Singapore, Hong Kong and the United States.

Exploiting gaps in the market have been behind its success – which has now been publicly recognised with the Bradford Means Business awards.