What’s the Business Case for ‘Made in the UK’?

Scan the headlines, and it’s easy to believe that British textiles have never been hotter or trendier.

It was only last month that Catherine, the Princess of Wales, stepped out in Scotland wearing a blue tartan coat she helped design with bespoke tailor Chris Kerr and heritage brand Johnstons of Elgin. Last week, the erstwhile Kate Middleton toured a wool mill in Pembrokeshire, West Wales, decked out in—most aptly—a burnt-orange Welsh tapestry jacket. And on Tuesday, she popped into Hiut Denim Co.’s factory in neighboring Cardigan, where she stitched a back pocket onto a pair of jeans as a gift for her husband—and heir to the throne—Prince William.

Coupled with the popularity of TV host Claudia Winkleman’s tweedy countryside-core wardrobe on “The Traitors,” which heavily features British brands such as Grenson, Hambro & Miller, Le Kilt and, indeed, Johnstons of Elgin, it might seem like “made in the U.K.” is experiencing a cultural resurgence.

But between globalization, changing business models, financial crises and Brexit, Britain’s stranglehold on apparel and textile production has weakened considerably. Though specific numbers are difficult to come by, Suzanne Ellingham, event director of London’s Source Fashion trade show, estimates that fewer than 400 manufacturers employing more than 20 people remain in the United Kingdom. The industry is, in a word, “distressed,” she said.

“And the reality is, when we ask ourselves, why is this industry so distressed, it’s because fashion has become cheap and people have moved their production offshore,” Ellingham said as she nursed a cup of tea one January morning, exhibitors and buyers bustling around her. “I think it is really something where we need to start asking consumers: When was the last time you bought a piece of clothing made in the U.K.?”

Few places have felt the squeeze harder than Leicester, once a bastion of British manufacturing but now a shadow of its former glory. Revelations in 2020 that Boohoo’s Leicester contractors were subjecting their workers to exploitative pay and unsafe conditions certainly sullied the Midlands city’s reputation. But supply chains were already shifting, said Bali Kler, marketing director at Who’s Who, a knitwear supplier that was part of the larger Apparel & Textile Manufacturers Federation delegation.

“Price points have gone abroad,” she said. “Bangladesh came through, China came through. And when prices are cheaper elsewhere, profits and margins follow. They’re getting their orders 60 days, 90 days in advance. Here, they’re not even giving you 30 days’ notice; they’re not looking after their country, so how can manufacturing here sustain?”

Inconsistent orders aside, one of the major impediments facing domestic manufacturers is operational cost. British labor is expensive, with a minimum hourly wage of more than 12 pounds ($16) and rising employer national insurance contributions. At the same time, manufacturers lack the same government assistance their counterparts overseas receive.

“It’s why ATMF was founded, to reach out to the government to say, ‘Look, please help U.K. manufacturers. They’ve got all the skills; why aren’t we using them?” Kler said. “Brands are using the U.K. for speed to market, so when they run out of stock, it’s like ‘Quick, quick, can you help us?’ But that’s not the way to help any business in the U.K.”

It’s certainly a mind-bender to start a button-making company in England, only to realize you’re potentially the last of your kind. But that’s what happened when Andrea Courtney and her husband, David, decided to purchase the country’s last button-turning machines from James Grove & Sons when it went bust in 2013. She thought they had lost their minds, but before long, Courtney was learning how to dye buttons to match fabric swatches.

“There used to be 50 button makers,” Courtney said. “Fifty. But it’s tough making a living from this.” Eventually, the old machines made way for state-of-the-art replacements, and the company decided to create its own unique selling point: natural and biodegradable buttons made from milk casein, buffalo horn and the “vegetable ivory” known as corozo. With just four people in the Cotswolds, Courtney & Co. produces an average of 1 million buttons a year.

“We could never compete with an Asian company on price,” she said. “So we do bespoke buttons, we personalize them, we dye them. We work with lots of fantastic brands, like high-value knitwear companies, that weave us into their story, who make absolutely sure that each of their components is sourced responsibly.”

Colin Spencer Halsey, owner and CEO of The Natural Fibre Company—a vertically integrated mill in Cornwall whose unofficial tagline is, “We process your fleece and add value to it”—knows all about working with vintage machines. Despite their veneer of romanticism, they’re prone to breaking down. Ask him what his biggest challenge is, however, and he doesn’t hesitate: energy costs. U.K. electricity prices are among the highest in Europe, often surpassing those of Germany, Ireland and Denmark. “We’re not competitive,” he added.

But Spencer Halsey quickly realized that even if the company couldn’t budge on price, it had other things to offer. While he didn’t bring along one of the skeins the mill made with dog hair, it’s through bespoke combinations of wool, mohair, alpaca, yak, nettle and other plant and animal fibers that The Natural Fibre Company tries to differentiate itself. “If you want to buy some very cheap wool synthetics, then we’re not in that market,” he added. The company, which produces its own line of hand-knitting yarn, also leans into “knitting tours” that are especially popular with Americans. Last year, it was a pit stop for two of them.

Another company that has had to pivot over the past several years is Fashion-Enter, a 20-year-old social enterprise in Haringey, North London, based on community, education and sustainability. Previously, the factory churned out 10,000 garments a week for Asos, accounting for 95 percent of the e-tail giant’s orders. Then Covid-19 happened, a new management came in and Asos moved most of its domestic production abroad.

“We’ve had to diversify quite a bit,” said Callum Holloway, Fashion-Enter’s director of technology. “I think the hardest part of being a U.K. manufacturer at the moment is the uncertainty of the industry. We’re constantly looking for new ways to find new work, which makes it tough to plan as a business.” 

Today Fashion-Enter shares its space with United Repair Center, which, as its name implies, provides high-quality repairs for boldface names such as Decathlon, Patagonia and Lululemon. The partnership has helped keep its sewing machines whirring. Also a boon: Fashion-Enter’s zero minimum quantity, which allows it to take on commission from smaller brands.

“So obviously we’re pretty flexible in what we can do,” Holloway said. “They’re all bespoke tailors in our fashion studio, so they can make anything from wedding dresses to tailored suits. We can do everything: the grading, all of the cut-make-trim, the finishing.” Fashion-Enter has produced small runs for Gymshark. Recently, it worked with the Rolling Stones to upcycle tour-merch deadstock into new looks by cutting them up and recombining the pieces.

Even so, there are greater ambitions for British manufacturing. Holloway’s boss—and mother—Fashion-Enter founder and CEO Jenny Holloway was appointed ATMF chair last spring. In December, ATMF, Fashion-Enter, the Garment and Textile Workers Trust and De Montfort University announced a national initiative to restore the United Kingdom as a “global center of textile excellence” by rolling out the first national textile quality mark. The hope, she said at the time, was to boost U.K. textile manufacturing’s cachet and create a “compelling economic and public case” for more domestic procurement, particularly from the government.

“So for example, school uniforms or army uniforms can be easily made here, much cheaper and more reliably than what they’re currently getting them for, which keeps people in work, keeps people trained up,” said Snahal Patel, director of 23 Foxes, a luxury knitwear specialist in Leicester. “You buy something from us, we spend the money on our workers, our workers spend it in their communities.”

Then there is the turnaround time. Go up to Leicester right now, he said, and you could have a sample by the next morning without losing anything in translation. Brands are only as good as their product, he added.

“What people buy is the brand but also the product,” Patel said. “And we make a good product. If the product was awful, no brand would stand a chance.”

The way some manufacturers have survived, he added, is by creating their own consumer-facing brands. 23 Foxes, for instance, operates its own label, dubbed British Christmas Jumpers, that touts “wonderfully handmade Christmas creations” directly to consumers. It also runs an outlet shop for “first-quality jumpers, timeless classics, one-off designs and slight seconds.”

Ellingham doesn’t see why the United Kingdom couldn’t employ tens of thousands of apparel and textile workers again. It was only in 2019 that Leicester employed 15,000 people; today, it’s roughly 1,800. Civil society groups like Labour Behind the Label, Remake and No Sweat have written letters to Britain’s biggest retailers, including Marks & Spencer, Matalan and Next, urging them to commit to manufacturing at least 1 percent of their products domestically. But the Source Fashion head thinks they can go further.

“One of the campaigns that we’ll be launching this year is ‘5 percent,’” she said. “If 5 percent of what is sold in the U.K. was made in the U.K., it would create thousands of jobs, and it would transform our industry. And honestly, if a retailer can’t afford to bring 5 percent of production back to the U.K., they really need to look at what they’re prioritizing in terms of how they’re doing their ranges.”

That goes for the government, too, Ellingham said. In November, Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy visited Fashion-Enter, hailing it as a “shining example” of the “kind of innovation and social responsibility our society should champion.” Couldn’t more come from that?

“When you have people who are in the civil service who are looking at procurement contracts, they’re just looking at volume, and they’re looking at unit price, they’re not looking at the impact of where that business is placed,” she said. “If National Health Service personal protective equipment were made in the U.K., it would support thousands of jobs. But it’s not. So there are some really simple things that we could do here that would drive job creation. And that’s what our government is supposed to be there to do.”