Two brothers, one saw and a workbench in the cellar of their family home marked the humble beginnings of the Arden journey.

In 1964 the Poynter brothers - Frank and Philip, along with their friend George Snowball, set up shop in the cellar of their mother's semi-detached house in Bredbury, Stockport.

Philip and George would clock off from a day's work making dies at a local printing firm and head straight for the cellar where they'd continue their craft.

Salesman Frank would sell the dies and secure the orders and within a matter of months the ambitious trio had the makings of a lucrative business.

Just four months later in February 1965, they'd outgrown their 10ft square underground workspace, and moved into their first official headquarters in Marple, and Arden Dies - the first of the Arden companies - was born.

During the early days, dies were made in the traditional way of drawing the shapes directly onto plywood before cutting them out with a jigsaw.

But Frank was a modern man with a vision to remain at the forefront of technological innovations and pushed for investment in new laser technology.

During an interview with Cutter and Creaser magazine in 1975, Frank was quoted as saying: "Old-fashioned dyed-in-the-wool attitudes towards die-making have got to go. Laser cut dies are definitely here to stay. I've had a hard time convincing my customers, but once they've seen the results they won't have anything else."

It was a bold move from Frank, but it was the right move for Arden, who were one of the first to adopt such cutting-edge laser technology.

In 1978, Frank's son Martin joined the ranks, and with a background in mechanical engineering, continued to drive the company forward.

During the 1990s the Dies and Software divisions of the Arden brand continued to grow, increasing our customer base and investing in new and advanced technology.

But the Arden group of companies didn't stop there, in 1999 we branched out into the embossing sector.

The Engraving arm of the organisation was formed following a chance meeting between MD Martin and a senior employee at our then embossing plate supplier. The pair decided to join forces and launched Arden Engraving.

A 400sqm purpose-built factory was constructed at the company headquarters in Marple, which is still the centre of the Engraving division today.

With a continued desire to invest in the future of the business, Arden Engraving built on our portfolio of machinery to include new CNC engraving centres to increase our capacity to become the largest facility of its type in the UK.

With the Arden Group keen to continue its global expansion, in partnership with Marbach GmbH, we launched an engraving production facility in Charlotte, NC, USA in July 2012, which has gone from strength to strength.

In 2015 we introduced a laser engraving facility capable of producing the finest detail engraving where CNC or the chemical etching process cannot provide the necessary depth to achieve perfect reversed out results as well as incredibly small text and other delicate detail - it was ideal for the label industry which was to be the next route of our expansion.

Thanks to the success of the USA division, we set our sights on the European market, launching Arden Engraving Germany in 2018, investing in new state-of-the-art CNC machines, to further extend our reach into markets within mainland Europe.

In 2018, Arden Engraving expanded into the label market. After supplying embossing and hot foil stamping tools to the carton industry for two decades, Arden's engraving division began making its mark on the label market, offering advanced rotary and flatbed tooling solutions to some of the largest label manufacturers in the world.

We invested heavily in the latest CNC engraving machinery and advanced laser technologies to provide highly precise foil stamping tooling to help ensure our customers are making the right impression.

Towards the end of 2020, we underwent a major rebrand with a fresh modern look and a new website. Our new, secondary logo, which is used alongside our original eagle emblem, is inspired by the carton outlines from Arden Sofware’s packaging design CAD software Impact; while the new website showcases the full range of products and tooling solutions for die-making and engraving.