Our initial products were sourced and manufactured in Scotland using a factory that produces traditional hand-framed knitwear. It was a very small collection of 12 pieces of knitwear. Once we finished the first season of wholesale, we realised the Scottish manufacturer couldn\u2019t keep up with the capacity we required. We then looked around for a factory that could make to the quality we were after, a fully-fashioned hand-linked garment, but we couldn\u2019t find one, so we decided to make them ourselves and took a place in a railway arch in Streatham, south London. We bought a couple of industrial machines and did production ourselves for two years.<\/p>\n
![\"Country](\"https:\/\/www.theindustry.fashion\/wp-content\/uploads\/COUNTRY-OF-ORIGIN-BEN-TAYLOR-FACTORY-PIC-2-300x200.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
What happened next?<\/strong><\/p>\n A year ago, we met Sa\u00efd Saleh, an old industry veteran who is now our business partner, who was looking at starting up a new factory in Wigston, Leicestershire. He shared the same passion as us for the craftsmanship of the product.<\/p>\n How important is \u2018made in Britain\u2019 to your brand ethos?<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s integral to what we do. Country of Origin was started up as a reaction to fast fashion and the less transparent production practices that go on. Keeping it closer to home, and having control over production, would mean that we would never be in that position. Also, knitwear, and particularly the way we make knitwear, is quite unique to the British Isles. It\u2019s a way of making garments that is dying out to a certain extent in the UK, with all the outsourcing to cheaper places to make it. We wanted to update the traditional with a more modern brand. Making in the UK plays into our ethical standpoint on working practices in the fashion industry, and not paying people a pittance for their work.<\/p>\n What\u2019s special about your designs?<\/strong><\/p>\n Where a lot of the knitwear manufacturers in the UK are very traditional, we take a very modernist approach to design. We keep clean and traditional silhouettes, but then update them with a bright colour palette. We\u2019ve introduced a knitted chore jacket and Fair Isle jumpers, but currently our best-selling style is the tri-colour lambswool crew-neck sweater, which sells for \u00a3145. Also, the collaboration with Bergdorf Goodman, through Bruce Pask, the retailer\u2019s fashion director, has been a really good seller for us this season \u2013 especially the cable knit patchwork piece.<\/p>\n How did the collaboration with Bergdorf Goodman come about?<\/strong><\/p>\n I think we originally met Bruce in our first season at Pitti Uomo. He really liked the collection and we kept in touch ever since. He\u2019s also been a a big customer of ours over the years, from a personal perspective, so it was great to design something with him, and we also did an exclusive cardigan. It\u2019s a collaboration that will continue. Around 60% of our orders online are now coming from the US, so it has given us a massive boost. We\u2019ve changed tact quite a lot, and this is the first season that we\u2019ve really concentrated on our direct to consumer online sales. As a result, we\u2019ve seen a really large upturn on that, especially from the US. We do carry stock at the factory because we are pushing online much more.<\/p>\n How big is your current wholesale business?<\/strong><\/p>\n We have about 90 stockists globally, though probably only about 15 of those are in the UK. We supply the likes of Peggs & son in Brighton, The Content Store and now John Lewis, which received the first ever drop from us two weeks ago. The UK is definitely not one of our biggest markets, but we are hoping to grow it quite considerably next season.<\/p>\n How do you approach wholesale markets outside of the UK?<\/strong><\/p>\n We do some different styles for different territories which we don\u2019t carry on our website but we do for wholesale markets such as Italy and Japan, which are actually our strongest wholesale markets, along with France. They are not necessarily exclusive designs for those markets, they are open to anyone, but they just work better in those territories as opposed to the UK and US.<\/p>\n Do you do spring\/summer knitwear as well?<\/strong><\/p>\n We have done in the past, and we\u2019re looking to really build on that for SS20. We\u2019re doing some fine knit T-shirts and fine knit Merino pieces, which will also go in to our AW20 collection so it elongates the sales period for the milder autumn months.<\/p>\n What has spurred doing the new pop-up shop at Coals Drop Yard?<\/strong><\/p>\n We see a bricks and mortar store as supporting our brand in general. It\u2019s not all about sales, it\u2019s about raising brand awareness. We have done a pop-up shop before, in Clerkenwell back in 2014 - not long after we started out. That ran for about three months. The new Coals Drop Yard pop-up opens on 14 November. We\u2019ve done it because we feel there\u2019s a real importance in making that offline connection with the customer. Obviously, our wholesale accounts do that to a certain extent, but I feel it\u2019s important to get the products in front of customers in an offline setting ourselves. We\u2019re on Lower Stable Street in Coal Drops Yard which has some interesting boutiques. The store is only about 200 sq ft, which is a perfect size for us to present our collection. We\u2019ve got some lads from Central Saint Martins to run it for us. Opening a permanent store is something we will consider moving forward, but it\u2019s not something that we\u2019re looking to do in the near future.<\/p>\n What can we expect from the brand for AW20?<\/strong><\/p>\n There will be a fair bit of lighter weight knitwear to move the collection on and complement our current lambswool offer. We\u2019re also looking at doing some recycled cashmere pieces. At this moment, I\u2019m pretty sure we will be showing AW20 at Pitti Uomo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":151756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10488,5,9762,6,10494],"tags":[15480,12216,15479],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Country](\"https:\/\/www.theindustry.fashion\/wp-content\/uploads\/COO-FACTORY-PIC-2-300x200.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.theindustry.fashion\/wp-content\/uploads\/COO-FACTORY-PIC-1-300x200.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.theindustry.fashion\/wp-content\/uploads\/COUNTRY-OF-ORIGIN-HAT-COLOURS-FACTORY-PIC-4-300x200.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n