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British clothing retailers are bringing production home as overseas costs rise and they seek to tap into demand for UK-made products.
One example is Fat Face, a fashion retailer, which is in its third season of its “British Heritage” coat and jacket range, designed and made in collaboration with Cro'Jack, a UK clothing brand.
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The seeds of the partnership were sewn when Anthony Thompson, chief executive of Fat Face, bought a Cro'Jack jacket from a small independent boutique.
Cro'Jack is the brainchild of Dean Batty – an industry veteran whose wife Lisa also designs for the business – and Daljit Mehat, whose family has run a factory in Wolverhampton since the 1950s.
Mr Thompson visited the factory, and the two companies set about designing a range of men's and women's coats and jackets. All parts, including the fabrics and buttons, are UK-made, and the garments are assembled in the Wolverhampton factory.
The collection, which accounts for only a low single-digit percentage of Fat Face's coat and jacket sales, is positioned as the retailer's “top end” range.
“We are really pleased,” says Mr Thompson of the partnership. Fat Face's sales of the British Heritage range have been “in line with expectations or better”.
Mr Thompson is keen to increase the company's use of UK production, but says this opportunity is limited. “It's not just about price, it's about capacity.Canada Goose Womens New The number of factories and the ability of those factories to produce volume is not there any more,Canada Goose Citadel Parka” he says.Canada Goose Solaris Parka
“Where it does exist, and where we can fit it in with the range, we are definitely open to increasing British product,” he says.
Cro'Jack meanwhile, has its own line of clothing independent of Fat Face, and it recently opened a “pop-up” shop in Covent Garden.
Mr Batty is trying to increase UK production capacity, both for the Cro'Jack label, and other retailers where there is demand, sourcing sweaters from Manchester, leatherwear from Shropshire and Northampton and jeans and trousers from Leicester.
But despite efforts to increase UK clothing manufacturing, he says it remains a “rarity”.Garmin Cycling
The museum on Shamrock Drive is a nonprofit run by an independent board. It had a budget of about $1 million, supplied mostly by private donations. The museum was temporarily closed from May to September because of mounting debts.
Closing saved more than $100,000 in expenses, officials said, and gave the museum board time to craft a better business model. It also gave the staff time to inventory the collection and determine which items aren't relevant to colonial Mecklenburg County.
All past-due bills were to be paid by the end of October, Ridge said, and weekend hours will be reinstated in 2013. (The museum recently began opening one Saturday a month).
Ridge believes it's highly unlikely that all the oddities in the museum's collection will find new homes by then, so an alternate plan is being considered.
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