Make An Entrance Takes Unorthodox Route to Success
The Lincoln-based doormat manufacturer is going from strength to strength, picking up awards along the way!
The award-winning doormat manufacturing business that Stuart Burlton and his wife created took an unusual route to success.
Make An Entrance, which manufactures high-quality traditional doormats and commercial logo mats, began life as an online-only retailer and has since become a manufacturer in its own right.
Most businesses travel in the opposite direction, but there’s a lot about Make An Entrance that’s unique.
For a start, they’re the only company in the UK making traditional hand-made coir doormats for the residential sector. (Coir is a natural fibre extracted from the outer husk of coconuts.)
Make An Entrance is also one of just three businesses manufacturing commercial grade coir inlaid logo mats for the commercial sector. Their doormats can be found in prominent businesses such as ASK, Marriott Hotels, Birmingham City FC, Britannia Hotels, Waterstones, Wetherspoons, Zizzi and of course Team Lincolnshire!
As an approved supplier to the National Trust, Make An Entrance mats can also be found in historic properties and stately homes throughout the UK.
The business has been such a success that Stuart was named Entrepreneur of the Year at the Lincolnshire Marketing Awards in September 2025.
How it started
Make An Entrance was founded as an online retailer in London in 2005, the brainchild of Stuart’s wife Samantha, a serial entrepreneur who has a talent for kickstarting new businesses.
The family’s connection with doormat making goes back much earlier, however: Stuart’s father Allen Burlton ran a factory for the Royal School for the Blind in the 1990s where blind and partially sighted people were employed stitching traditional doormats.
Stuart and Samantha moved the business to Lincoln in 2011 and decided to manufacture mats themselves, opening their first workshop on Sadler Road in 2018. They continued manufacturing through the pandemic and soon found themselves with two workshops and a number of storage containers. In order to streamline and consolidate the business, Make An Entrance moved to a newly converted workshop and office facility on Crofton Drive in November 2024.
For the past two decades the company has provided exceptional quality bespoke doormats to homes and businesses throughout the UK.
With products ranging from the traditional hand-stitched coconut doormats to state-of-the-art printed logo matting, Make An Entrance has a very wide customer base. It takes care of each of these business segments very effectively with separate teams allocated to the care of each client group.
The company is dedicated to care, quality and attention to detail, and its operations are driven by a real family ethos.
“One of our aims is to continue to revive the traditional hand-stitched coir matting market and bring it back to the position it enjoyed many years ago,” says Stuart.
“Originally all doormats were made this way. They were long-lasting, hard wearing and made in the UK; they didn’t contain plastics and they could be composted naturally at the end of their life.
“The sustainable credentials of coir, and the fact that our mats are made in the UK, make it the perfect antidote to mass-produced and cheaply made mats imported from overseas.”
Giving back to the community
Make An Entrance has its roots in a factory which provided employment for blind and partially sighted people, and one of Stuart’s key motivations is to give something back and use his business as a force for social good.
The business supports mat making workshops in prisons across the UK to help inmates build their self-confidence and skills. Stuart has developed a close partnership with the charity ACTS Trust working with people in Lincoln to improve their mental health.
“We’re also very grateful to a number of businesses that have helped and supported us since we moved to Lincolnshire,” said Stuart.
“Denby Transport were a great help in the beginning with office space and storage space; Team Lincolnshire ambassador Panoramix IP have advised us on our intellectual property rights, patents and trademarks; and we’re grateful to Wilkin Chapman, also an ambassador, for all their legal advice.”
What does the future hold?
To streamline and future-proof the business, Stuart and his team have embarked on a process of re-engineering the whole company throughout the autumn of 2025.
Next year a new IT system will be introduced to improve efficiency, and Stuart plans to purchase a new Zünd cutting machine, which will be 50% to 75% more efficient and will free up staff to make more traditional mats.
Make An Entrance is also looking to achieve ISO quality certification.
“We want to build up our capacity and make ourselves scalable as soon as possible,” says Stuart. “I’d like to develop a template model and roll it out to other parts of the UK and Ireland, Holland, even Australia.”
But as Make An Entrance grows, Stuart is determined that social value should continue to be just as important as profit, so the rehabilitation of offenders and projects to improve their mental health will continue to be at the forefront of operations.
Joining Team Lincolnshire
“Make An Entrance has grown in Lincolnshire and we’re well established here now,” says Stuart.
“Becoming a Team Lincolnshire Ambassador means we can give something back to the area that has supported our growth from the beginning. It allows us to network with like-minded business people, give advice to others, and offer support to other Lincolnshire businesses.
“People around the country probably think that Lincolnshire is just about farming, but there’s a lot of manufacturing here as well. When we exhibited at the National Flooring Show in Harrogate in September 2025 all our colleagues wore their Team Lincolnshire badges, because we want people to recognise that there’s more to Lincolnshire than farming!”
