Once, Britain ruled the outdoor-gear world. Sarah Stirling charts the

GEAR SPECIAL
Made in
Britain
Once, Britain ruled the outdoor-gear world.
Sarah Stirling charts the fall – and
tentative rise – of gear that’s
Made in Britain.
I
PHOTO: DMM.
n the 1990s, Rab stitched down jackets in Sheffield,
Karrimor crafted rucksacks in Lancashire and
Berghaus built Gore-Tex jackets in Newcastleupon-Tyne. Britain was heaving with outdoor-gear
factories, now long shut. What happened? Is there
any such thing as ‘British’ gear anymore?
Imagine the scene: you’re taking in slack from a dynamic rope
with your belay device, dressed in a softshell jacket. Your partner
places his rubber rock boot, steps up and pauses to remove the
cam. Consider your luck: once, none of these products were
available. Falling while climbing wasn’t an option; walking in the
rain meant getting wet.
Britain’s outdoor-gear manufacturing industry was a key force
behind the development of many of our modern essentials. From
the 1960s till the 1990s, it was our Golden Age: we became a
global superpower in outdoor-gear manufacture and innovation.
This was surprising for two reasons: firstly, it boomed out of
nowhere – unlike other countries we didn’t have a long heritage
of ski and mountaineering manufacture – and secondly, all
the industriousness was kicked off by a few hardcore British
mountaineers, who decided to stay in more often and sew.
R Born in Britain: a DMM Belay Master
krab starting its climbing life.
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GEAR SPECIAL
Easier, Safer, Drier
Soggy Socks?
W He’s seen it all.
Peter Hutchinson:
founder of Mountain
Equipment.
Photo: PHD.
Alpkit:
Alt-berg:
Blox Climbing:
Buffalo:
Cioch:
outdoor equipment,
Lake District.
bouldering mats, chalk bags
and bike-frame bags,
Derbyshire.
walking boots,
Sheffield.
climbing clothing, chalk
bags and mats,
Barnsley.
outdoor clothing,
Sheffield.
outdoor clothing,
Skye.
www.buffalosystems.co.uk
www.cioch-direct.co.uk
www.altberg.co.uk
www.alpkit.com
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RY Y E AR | F OR BRIT IS H CL IMBI
IMBIN
N G AN D WA LKIN G SIN CE 1944
www.climblox.com
is an effective, easy to use cleaner designed for outdoor footwear
sed
Ba
A selection of brands that are still Made in Britain:
Alpine Aiguille:
www.aiguillealpine.co.uk
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team today.
Photo: Alpkit.
Once a few outdoor companies made the move, others
felt forced to follow, or risk being priced out. By the time
Rab sold his business in 2004, manufacturing in the UK had
become a unique selling point, so the new owners, Equip,
did consider keeping Rab’s Sheffield factory open. However,
as Neil McAdie, Rab Sales Director explains: “The higher
costs involved would have damaged our ability to invest in
progressive design and marketing. This would have held
the brand back, and made it impossible to compete in a
globalised world. We unfortunately did lose a small number
of manufacturing jobs in the UK, but our resultant ability to
compete and grow has now built a much bigger company
that now employs three times more people than at the
height of our UK manufacturing. The huge investment in
technology by the best Chinese factories also enables them
to produce higher specification products than we could
produce in a small-scale UK factory.”
As Western industries faded away, China developed into
the world’s factory. In Guangdong province alone, more
than 30,000 textile companies now employ more than
five million people. The industry creates so much smog,
that when they close down production in Guangdong for
national holidays they get a few sunny days in Hong Kong.
However, there are signs the low-cost, high-reward Chinese
paradigm is ending. The country has one of the world’s
fastest-growing economies, and Guangdong is now home
to the most billionaires in mainland China.
“We all offshored everything when China was an
emerging market,” Jim Evans, one of the founders of the
small British outdoor brand, Alpkit, tells me. “Now costs are
going up in China.”
Factories generally reduce manufacturing rates per
product if offered two things: a bigger order, and longer
rbon (PF
R The Alpkit
rivalry pushed rucksack design to increasingly high
standards, and Berghaus famously worked with Gore-Tex to
create better waterproof breathable fabrics.
By the 1980s, a variety of UK outdoor-gear companies
had cropped up. Fast forward to 1990 and a red-bricked
building, Rab Down Equipment, stands a mile outside
Sheffield city centre. It’s surrounded by small, derelict
factories; once part of Sheffield’s thriving steel and cutlery
industries, now long closed. Rab on the other hand, was
on the up. His business, which he’d started from home in
1981, now employed around 20 people: sewing machinists,
cutters, down fillers and quality controllers. This would
more than double before the end. I spoke to Mark Wilson,
a former cutter, who worked there for 25 years. “Rab was
very hands-on and always asking our opinions, products
evolved,” he told me.
Now, however, Rab’s factory is boarded up, like Sheffield’s
steelworks before it. Rab still down-fill their sleeping bags inhouse (saving bulky shipping, giving hands-on quality control
and ensuring that every bag is freshly filled close to the time
of purchase) but nearly all their gear is made overseas. And
they’re not alone: there’s a depressingly similar story behind
most of our home-grown gear companies. They survived
the Thatcher years but, then, one after the other, most shut
down in the 1990s.
You can trace everything back to the ‘MADE IN CHINA’
labels on our stuff. In the 1970s, leader Deng Xiaoping’s
reforms opened China’s economy for business, and set
the country on the heady road to capitalism. Investors
began buying into Britain’s gear companies and offshoring
manufacture to China. Staff costs plummeted, and suddenly
there was no factory, unions, health-and-safety, machinery
or raw materials to worry about. You can see the appeal.
Water
MADE IN THE UK
V Hector Vieytes
who taught Rab
Carrington all he
knew in Buenos
Aires, where Rab
worked for him.
Photo: Rab Carrington.
Clean, waterproofed boots allow water vapour to escape and keep your feet dry
ca
Frustrated by the lack of decent kit available,
mountaineers like Rab Carrington and Peter Hutchinson
began designing, making and selling it themselves. Quite
reasonably, they assumed this would lead to careers that
revolved around the outdoors; quite by accident, they
became big businessmen with teams of staff and less time
to spend in the mountains than ever.
“We used to pay a lot for European pegs and krabs,” said
Peter Hutchinson, “or made them ourselves.” What began as
a way to save money developed into a business venture: in
1961, Peter founded Mountain Equipment. “When I started
up, none of the UK gear specialists were around except
Karrimor. I remember the Berghaus lads starting later.”
Hutchinson began making outdoor equipment to order,
from the farm shack he lived in. He recalls Yvon Chouinard,
founder of Black Diamond Equipment, flying over from
America to check out the competition: “When he saw this
ramshackle outhouse with two dirty guys heating up pegs
in the fireplace, I think he realised he didn’t have much to
worry about.” Soon afterwards, Hutchinson was visited by
outdoor retailer Bob Brigham (of the family business now
known as Ellis Brigham), got his first order for a range of
sleeping bags, and moved into new premises in Glossop.
It was an era of intense innovation, competition and
collaboration. Climbers like Don Whillans and Dougie
Haston helped design the kit they needed for the new
age. Whillans developed the Whillans Box tent (made by
Karrimor), the first one-piece down suit (made by Peter
Hutchinson) and the first sit harness (made by Troll). In
1977, Mark Vallance got the bank to give him a second
mortgage, and worked with Ray Jardine to produce the
first Friends: Wild Country was born. Brits were behind
innovations in walking gear, too. Berghaus and Karrimor’s
Dirt and soaked-­in water stops sweat escaping so it stays in your boots
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.
hand-made in Britain
Photo: PHD.
R PHD gear: stil
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SUM M I T # 7 4 | S UM M E R 2 0 1 4 | 5 1
PHOTO: DMM.
GEAR SPECIAL
R Krabs getting
anodised on the
DMM production
line, Llanberis.
to process it. Nowadays, to minimise costs,
many gear companies have their whole
product ranges finalised two years in
advance, and they have more of it to sell.
“People used to covet down jackets,” muses
Jim. “They were Gucci kit. You repaired and wore them
year after year. Now you hardly ever see old down jackets,
do you? People buy a new one every few years.”
Over coffee, we discuss that what began as a push to
erode other companies’ prices has resulted in whole
industries being eroded in Britain, and contributed to our
disposable society. And now, as manufacturing prices rise
overseas, companies are losing the increased margins they
gained by offshoring in the first place. It’s got complicated.
No wonder Alpkit is bringing some of their production
back to the UK while they’re still small enough. I visited
their airy new warehouse in Derbyshire: open-plan offices,
a workshop and showroom, complete with comfy sofas and
log-burner. A cheery band of young climbers are making
bouldering mats, chalk bags and bike-frame bags. So, how’s
this step back in time going?
“It’s probably six to ten times more expensive to employ
a sewing machinist in the UK than in China,” explains Jim,
“But now Alpkit is well-established, we’re more confident
it can withstand slightly higher prices. Our aim is to evolve
into one of the UK’s foremost brands, as companies
like DMM have done, and we see ‘Made in Britain’ as an
important element of that.”
R Alpkit: stepping
back in time?
Once there was an enclave of British
factories making innovative climbing
equipment in North Wales: HB, Clog and
DMM. But DMM, in Llanberis, is now the
sole manufacturer of climbing hardware left in the UK.
How do they make it work? I called Chris Rowlands, DMM
Brand Manager, for a chat.
“Of course, it’d be cheaper to have products made in
the Far East, but imagine if we said to our staff, ‘Right
we’ll sack you off and just keep a warehouse here!’”
Chris has a good chuckle.
“Anyway, then we’d just be another ‘Made in China’
hardwear brand fighting it out at the lower end. We’ve had
to continually reinvest in the blood and guts of the factory
– technical processes, machinery – but it’s worth it.”
There are obvious disadvantages to having all your stock
made thousands of miles away on another continent.
DMM knows exactly what goes on in its factory and they’ve
trained up a wealth of experience: some of their staff have
worked there for 30 years.
“We’ve got more efficient and can still produce
karabiners here in Wales at a competitive price,” says Chris.
“Meanwhile those who sold out to the Far East have been
hit with price rises. Yes, we have to pay proper wages and
abide by proper health and safety regulations but we’ve
come through much stronger.”
Because manufacturing prices in China have risen, many
Western companies have now sought out cheaper labour
MADE IN THE UK
DMM:
Hope Technology:
PHD:
Rab:
climbing hardware,
North Wales.
bike gear,
Lancashire.
www.dmmwales.com
www.hopetech.com
mountaineering clothing
and equipment,
Manchester.
Fill and finish down sleeping
bags in house; expedition
gear.
www.phdesigns.com
www.rabuk.com
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in countries such as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. A study
published earlier this year reported that many clothing
workers earn around £5 a day in an industry worth
billions. New guidelines are regularly introduced,
but it’s not always easy to patch problems in distant
factories using Western red tape. Outdoor-gear
companies recently hit the UK papers over claims
that geese were live-plucked to fill down jackets. The
videos of shrieking birds having feathers mercilessly
ripped from them went viral, and public outcry led to
many companies painstakingly tracing and reforming
their down supply.
There’s growing public concern about where,
and how, things are made. Not just the conditions
of faraway factory workers and down geese, but the
environmental impact of transport and pollution. And, as
more people try to buy products made closer to home,
could Britain’s gear manufacturing industry be tentatively
reseeding itself? Small cottage industries are springing
up in garages and on kitchen tables, growing organically
when profits allow.
R DMM: flying the
Welsh flag for British
climbing hardwear.
Photo: DMM.
“IT’S STILL VERY DIFFICULT
FOR A START-UP TO COMPETE
WITH ESTABLISHED BRANDS.”
“There was a hunger in the climbing community to
buy gear made in the UK,” explains Gareth Candlin, who
started Momentum Bouldering in 2012, making bouldering
pads on an old Singer sewing machine. Nowadays, small
companies can set up an online shop, Facebook, Twitter
and Vimeo and have a powerful marketing tool in their
hands, Gareth explains. “One person can effectively be
head of marketing, sales and manufacturing. Twenty years
ago that wasn’t possible.” But it’s clearly not as easy as it
might appear: Momentum Bouldering folded recently,
partly because “it takes money to build a reputation”.
Aide Jebb has a few years on Gareth: he founded Blox
Climbing in 2009, making climbing clothing and chalk bags
in Barnsley. He tells me that, even with the advantages of
the web, it’s still very difficult for a start-up to compete with
established brands: you can’t offshore small production
runs and it’s comparatively expensive to manufacture in the
UK. “Don’t expect to become a millionaire, do it because
you enjoy it,” advises Aide.
Will more brands move manufacture closer to home
in the future? Despite the many concerns with overseas
manufacturing, it seems unlikely. A report produced by
the government last October revealed pessimistic figures.
Nearly 9m people were employed in British manufacturing
in 1966; by 2011 fewer than 3m were. Manufacturing
Sarah Stirling is a
freelance adventuresports and travel
journalist based in
Chamonix. See
www.sarahstirling.com.
processes have moved on apace overseas, making
our old factories look like museums. Yet the study
suggested there could be more manufacture here
if Britain found a niche where it could compete
with Asian factories, suggesting high-quality
products, tailored to customer demand.
One man is ahead of the game here. He’s
experienced the rise, fall and tentative regrowth
of the industry, and learnt a few things along the
way. With relief that he’s out of it, Peter Hutchinson
recalls the later years of running Mountain
Equipment in the 1990s: “I found myself with 90
employees, many of whose names I didn’t even
know. Instead of talking to climbers, I had designers
calling me about next years’ colours.”
Peter sold Mountain Equipment shortly afterwards,
and set up a small factory in an old mill not far from his
original farm shack, called Peter Hutchinson Designs
(PHD) in 1997. Since then he’s employed local craftworkers, many of whom were made redundant during
the offshoring revolution, and sources over 95% of
his materials from Europe. How does he make such a
sustainable small business work?
“The textile industry follows the economical needle (the
cheapest place to sew) and I’m not so sure that the UK
can compete,” Peter tells me. “What the UK can offer is
flexibility and very high standards of workmanship.”
Neil McAdie from Rab agrees: “We can’t see our
manufacturing returning to the UK in the short term. But
we do continue to make the small production run highaltitude expedition down clothing here in Derbyshire.”
The benefits of UK manufacturing were made clear to
me recently when a friend ordered a sleeping bag from
PHD, and was surprised to receive an email back from Peter
himself. “He asked what I wanted the sleeping bag for, and
said he wasn’t sure I’d chosen the right one. We ended
up speaking for ages on the phone and he came up with
modifications to suit exactly what I wanted.”
Rather than just taking his money, this man, who has
clothed mountaineers from Dougal Haston to Andy Cave,
and celebrities from Madonna to Tom Cruise for film sets,
seemed just as keen to make sure every customer had the
right outdoor gear for them. What a service, and one that
many people don’t even realise exists, since you don’t
see much advertising from the handful of relatively small
brands who still manufacture in Britain.
It’s a complex situation, but the answer, as ever, lies in
our wallets. Next time you need some new outdoor kit, will
you scour Amazon for the cheapest deal on a brand made
in Bangladesh or will you check first to see if you could get
something British-made? Would you really be willing to pay
slightly more for gear that’s made in Britain, reducing the
environmental impact and encouraging the regrowth of a
once-great British industry? It’s your choice.
MADE IN THE UK
Snugpak:
Terra Nova:
Troll:
outdoor clothing, sleeping
bags and rucksacks,
Yorkshire.
tents and
outdoor gear.
outdoor and industrial
clothing and equipment,
Yorkshire.
Know of any more
outdoor-gear brands
that are still Made in
Britain? Let us know at
www.trolluk.com
[email protected].
www.snugpak.com
www.terra-nova.co.uk
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