The Interview: Osprey London founder Graeme Ellisdon on learning from the past and looking to the future

In 1980, at the age of 25, Graeme Ellisdon launched Osprey London with £500 in a rented hayloft. His handcrafted belts became an instant hit with leading retailers and high-profile fans, “from rock royalty to real royalty”.

As Ellisdon’s “love story in leather” developed, he expanded into bags and other leather goods using traditional saddlery techniques. The brand earned a global reputation for affordable luxury with “a distinctive British sensibility”.

Still proudly independent, the company remains under the leadership of CEO Graeme and his wife, Alex Ellisdon, who he met 12 years after starting the business and who is Osprey London’s Chief Operating Officer and Chief Creative Officer.

Along with their team, Graeme and Alex run Osprey London from The Hoo Estate, an historic Hertfordshire country house they acquired in 2016, which they have lovingly “brought back to life”, along with its ancient woodlands and parkland.

Premium leathers are hand-selected for beauty and their ability to age gracefully. Products are crafted by expert artisans in the UK, Italy, Spain, Portugal and India, then quality-checked at The Hoo.

Post-Covid shifts in the retail landscape put paid to Osprey London’s flagship store on London’s Regent Street, but these days the brand operates 11 stores at premium designer outlet destinations, including Cheshire Oaks, Gloucester Quays, York Designer Outlet and Outlet Shopping at the O2 in London, with high-volume footfall being a key draw. The brand still maintains its digital flagship for full-price items.

Entering its 46th year in 2026, there are grand plans to accelerate international expansion in what’s shaping to be a ‘milestone year’, as well as grow its direct to consumer business and broaden its product ranges. Graeme Ellisdon reveals all to the TheIndustry.fashion.

How did the story of Osprey London begin and how did it develop?

It all started in 1980 with £500 and a rented room above a brick outbuilding (formerly a hayloft) in Kimpton, Hertfordshire, teaching ourselves leatherwork from scratch. The first products were soft leather and embroidered belts. Hand cut and handstitched. We were really inspired by the use of colour in the embroidery and, looking back, it’s wonderful to see how unique they were for the time, but also how relevant that aesthetic is even today. Leading UK retailers snapped them up almost immediately and we spent the next fifteen years building our craft and growing the belt business with an eye to building Osprey London into a lifestyle brand long-term.

Knowing how skilled we had become with leatherwork, we made the leap into bags and small leather goods. I spent time in Italy immersing myself in the craft of fine leather goods production, learning the trade from some of the best artisans in the world. That education was transformative. When I came back and (my wife) Alex joined the business, we knew we had the knowledge and the vision to build something truly special and a solid foundation for a full lifestyle brand rooted in leather and craft.

How would you best describe your brand?

At its heart, Osprey London is an independently owned British luxury lifestyle brand with an absolute commitment to quality, craft and best-in-class design. We have over 45 years of heritage behind us, and we wear that proudly, but we are not a brand that looks backwards. We are constantly curious, constantly evolving, looking at what we can do next that will excite both us and our customers. We’re a lifestyle brand built on values that have remained constant since day one, with integrity of materials, beauty of design and honesty of purpose. The joy of the journey is something we hold true and something that fuels us every single day.

In the pre-website and pre-social media world of the early 1980s, were there any defining moments?

There were several. When we started getting re-orders from serious retailers very early on, that told me everything. Buyers have no patience for mediocrity, so when they came back and said “we need more,” that was validation money simply cannot buy. And then when we understood who our customers were. Discerning shoppers with purpose and style were connecting with what we were creating and that really gave us confidence.

Who was your first main retail account?

John Lewis was a landmark account for us in those very early days. To have one of Britain's most respected and trusted retailers stock your handmade leather belts when you are such a young business is both thrilling and affirming in equal measure. That relationship grew with us as we grew. As we expanded into bags and small leather goods, John Lewis has remained one of our key wholesale pillars. It is a relationship built on mutual respect for quality, and it has endured because the fundamentals have never changed. We make gorgeous products that work, that last and that customers love.

What other retailers have you worked with?

From the outset, we showed our collections twice a year at the Porte de Versailles fashion shows in Paris. It was there we met the best retailers in the world. They placed orders with us with confidence, which was the most exciting time. We sold our collections to multiple Japanese stores, the best independent stores across Italy, to Barneys and Louis of Boston in the US, and we began working with Harvey Nichols, Selfridges, Harrods and many stores in the UK. We continued working with those accounts for many years.

Throughout the 80s and 90s, we also collaborated with some of the most exciting designers and retailers of the era - Betty Jackson, Workers for Freedom, Nicole Farhi, Jasper Conran, Paul Smith, Joseph, Dries Van Noten, Victoire in Paris, Beams in Tokyo, to name just a few. It was a thrilling time in the industry. London was a creative epicentre and designers had real voice and conviction. Every season brought fresh ideas, new conversations and collaborators. Working alongside people who were genuinely shaping the industry inspired us, challenged us, and laid the foundations for everything Osprey stands for today.

Did you ever envisage Osprey London fast approaching its 50th year?

Back in 1980, I wasn’t thinking in terms of decades. You are thinking about the next order, the next collection and the next challenge. But what Alex and I have always had is an absolute conviction in the quality and value of what we make. When you believe in the integrity of your products, when you know that what you are selling genuinely enriches people's lives, longevity becomes a natural consequence rather than a goal. Forty-six years is a remarkable milestone, and I am enormously proud of it, but really it’s just part of the journey that has brought us here. What we’ve built so far is more of a launchpad for what’s next. We’re just as excited about the next chapter as we were in those early days. The brand has never been better positioned for what I genuinely believe is a real inflection point for Osprey London.

What percentage of your business is direct-to-consumer these days?

Our direct-to-consumer (DTC) business - website and stores - has grown significantly and now represents over 35% of our revenue. The website is our fastest-growing channel and remains our top strategic priority. We have invested very deliberately in our digital platform over the past couple of years, relaunching it to properly reflect our premium brand positioning and to serve international customers from a single, centralised system.

Our stores contribute meaningfully, but really we look at the stores as so much more than a revenue channel. There is so much value in a destination as a tangible reflection of our brand. A place to really connect with the customer and create a space for feedback to help guide the next steps we should take. Our customer is central to everything we do, so we will never move away from a DTC model.

Why did your Regent Street flagship store close and what’s your current retail strategy?

Closing our Regent Street flagship nearly three years ago was a difficult decision, but with the blow of Covid accelerating shifts already reshaping the retail landscape, the right path forward was very clear: our digital channel had to become our flagship. Ultimately it was a relief - a chance to focus our energy on building the Osprey London website into the true window on the world for the brand.

We very much have a multi-channel strategy across DTC and wholesale disciplines. Looking at DTC specifically, we saw the shift to a more premium outlet offering across the UK and knew Osprey London would perform really well in those environments, so it was a natural expansion, fast evolving into a core pillar for us, and we now have 11 doors across the UK based in premium outlet villages.

But, to be clear, this isn’t an outlet-only strategy. Post-Covid, we closed our flagship store on Regent Street after ten years of successful trading to direct investment entirely into our website to get it to where we needed it to be. As a self-funded business, this was a big decision for us, but we had to prioritise and get laser-focused - and I'm so glad we did because our website is now thriving.

We are coming to the end of that development sprint so retail expansion is back on the roadmap which is very exciting, and we are exploring some opportunities for a retail door in London. However, we are not interested in growth for growth's sake and opening new doors is a big undertaking, particularly in today’s market. Every location we choose must be right for the brand and right for our customer. So, right now we are taking a more considered approach to it, looking at opportunities across the UK and internationally.

What are your best-selling women's products right now? And men's?

For our women's business, woven leather is simply in our DNA. It always has been. Our ‘Lima’ collection has been a perennial favourite for years, and this season, with woven having its moment absolutely everywhere, the reaction has been really positive - so we will continue to lean into that heavily in future seasons. It remains a critically important part of our creative future, and there is a great deal more development to come.

Men’s is having a brilliant moment. Like-for-like growth is strong across all channels. The ‘Hudson’ backpack in particular has become something of a star, and the ‘Compass’ collection is central to everything we are building in menswear.

What can customers expect going forward?

I am enormously excited about what we have developed for AW26. Our product team has made some really brilliant strides with our women’s options. After taking time to really understand our customer and how her relationship with her bags is changing, we have noticed more demand for multi-use choices - a bag that takes her from desk to dinner, from the school run to a weekend away, without missing a beat. Shoulder bags are having a real moment for us, and we have leaned into that completely. Slouchy, beautifully durable leathers, elevated hardware and upgraded details throughout. It is a collection that feels genuinely relevant to how women are actually living right now.

For men, it comes back to what our male customer has always demanded from us: practicality and functionality, but always with a discerning take. He notices the detail, so we need to keep holding ourselves to an incredibly high standard on that front.

What are your price points?

We have done a great deal of work on our price architecture, and I think it is some of the most important strategic work we have done in recent years. The market is in motion, consumer confidence is nuanced, and the question of where you sit on the price spectrum has never mattered more. For us, the answer is clear: to sit firmly in affordable luxury, with £175 to £250 as our key price points. That is the range where we can deliver everything our customer expects from Osprey London at a price that feels honest and accessible. In a market where so many brands are either racing to the bottom or pricing themselves out of reach, that position feels more powerful and more relevant than ever.

Are you planning on launching any new product categories?

We are always exploring. Our evolution from belts to bags to a full lifestyle brand has been organic and has always followed our curiosity and our customer. We have already expanded meaningfully into home fragrance, fine jewellery, silk scarves, knitwear, sunglasses and gifts. The next frontier is wherever the brand's values - great materials, beautiful craft, intelligent design - can be expressed most authentically. I work really closely with my son’s Freddie and Jack on product innovation and we continue to look at categories where we feel there is a gap, as well as a natural place for us to exist.

Do you design all your products?

Alex and I lead the design process across all collections, but we work closely with an incredibly talented team of product developers and designers. Our products are made to our design briefs across Asia, some of whom we’ve been working with closely from our very first samples. We’ve just spent two weeks with manufacturing partners I now call friends, and it really is just as exciting as day one when we start developing newness with them every season. Design, for us, is not delegated; it is owned collaboratively, always.

Are you of the opinion that working with leather is the ultimate in sustainability?

Leather is simply a beautiful by-product of the food we eat. A well-made leather bag is not consumed and discarded; it is lived with, softened by use and made more beautiful by the years. Sustainability, for us, begins with that mindset - choosing materials that endure, methods that respect the earth and design that resists the churn of trend.

What other materials do you work with?

Leather is and always will be our core material; it’s the reason the brand exists. However, we have also embraced high-quality nylon and technical fabrics, which serve customers who want more functional everyday options, as in our ‘Voyage’ collection. Developing other categories, it is also a joy to now work with fine silks and yarns for scarves and knitwear, always learning from the finest artisans.

How big a role has social media played in growing your business in the modern era?

Transformational. There is simply no other word for it. Social media has given us the ability to tell our story directly, not through intermediaries, but directly to our customers. The Hoo Estate, the craft, the colours, our wider purpose - there is so much to talk about. It has allowed us to reach customers we simply could not have reached through traditional wholesale and retail alone, and it has been the engine of our digital growth. It is also a touchpoint for feedback, so it is just as important as our stores for hearing from our customers.

Is AI now also playing a part in your business strategy?

Absolutely, and I think anyone in business who is not engaging seriously with AI right now is leaving themselves behind. We are integrating AI across several areas, but at a more considered pace than I imagine other businesses are, given the structure of our brand. There are, of course, areas where it makes complete sense to adopt it fully, like how we understand our customers and personalise their experience online. Also, for how we optimise our marketing or the more operational parts of product planning. But we need to ensure our people stay at the heart of the business and every decision we make. I am characteristically curious about new innovation and AI is no different, but the key is to look at how we can use it to enhance, not replace.

What part does The Hoo Estate in Hertfordshire play in the Osprey London story?

The Hoo is close to my heart in a way that goes beyond business. In 2015, Alex and I moved the Osprey business and team to this extraordinary 125-acre estate in Hertfordshire. Since then, it has become a living, breathing expression of everything Osprey London stands for. It’s a labour of love. We take our stewardship of the estate seriously and spend time and revenue returning a significant Hertfordshire country house back to life, working to look after and restore the ancient woodlands and parkland, along with rebuilding 85% of the original house back to its original glorious state when it was first built over 300 years ago.

We have spent years restoring the historic buildings with the same reverence, attention to detail and love of craft that we bring to every product. We have also rewilded the grounds, planted trees, created wildflower meadows, installed solar panels and established beehives. Bats, newts, butterflies and owls have all returned.

We have a team of 35 working from The Hoo now and it really is the most inspiring setting for creativity. It is a community project as much as a private endeavour. When people understand The Hoo, they understand us: our reverence for natural materials, our belief in doing things properly and our commitment to leaving things better than we found them.

How do you intend to grow the brand going forward?

We are at a genuinely exciting inflection point because now all the right pieces are in place. We have a transformed digital platform capable of serving global markets and a stunning physical retail estate. We also have a product range that is broader and better than ever, as well as a family team that has never been more aligned. The growth strategy has three pillars: firstly, to accelerate international expansion, particularly in the US and UAE, using our new digital capabilities as the launchpad. Secondly, we will continue to grow our direct-to-consumer business online, and thirdly, we will continue to deepen and broaden the product range, moving further into lifestyle categories where we can continue to add genuinely unique pieces that are true to Osprey London.

What else can we expect to see from Osprey London for the rest of 2026 and into 2027?

2026 is shaping up to be a milestone year in every sense. We will be launching into new markets and introducing some of the most exciting product we have ever made. Into 2027, we will be deepening our international presence significantly, particularly in the United States, and really doubling down on connecting with our customer through a refreshed brand lens fuelled by the legacy we have built. We have so many stories to tell and feel more globally ambitious than ever.

We’re particularly excited about our men’s offering for AW26 and we’ve also been working really hard on expanding our gifting assortment for the festive period across small leather goods, belts, accessories and our ever-popular men’s grooming sets.