well it's great to welcome you here to Cookson and Clegg in sunny Blackburn nice to get to
show you where I work for once having been to your wonderful factory several times
I have a few pairs of your shoes, I think I have five pairs of your shoes
Well we both sort of share this sort of passion for manufacturing in the UK obviously Tricker's
has been around for nearly 200 years and still making things in the way that we always have done.
Well it's always lovely to see your place and see you know to see something go from a flat
sheet of leather to a beautiful pair of shoes at the end of it.
Well there's not many of us left in Northampton that are still making 100%. People that buy
Trickers buy it as an investment. They really treasure them. There's 260 individual processes,
jobs bits being done to those shoes and might look a lot of money to a lot of people to invest in
up front but they will literally last you a lifetime.
We have a finite number of shoes we can make our production line is very limited to the either
the size of the factory the number of operatives that we've got.
We've been in Blackburn since 1860 so we're not we're no spring chickens. Around 70% of
the world's cotton textiles were made within 30-40 miles of here which is an incredible thing
and about 600 000 people were employed in textile manufacturing in this county alone.
All the things that we're thinking and talking about doing to make our industry more sustainable
and more ethical are all really things that were done until 40-50 years ago as a matter of course.
Everybody fixed their clothes everybody used natural materials everybody made things to
to last and I think the big challenge for me as somebody in the clothing industry is to try and
spread this message that you can buy fewer things but buy better things and
make sure that those things last and if you can do that you can feel very proud
of the way you kind of treat the planet in terms of the clothing that you own.
We haven't been very good at this we've accepted mediocrity
in the products that we buy a lot of people have.
I think a lot of people don't even know how mediocre the things they are buying are
because they've never had the opportunity to wear something that's of real quality. I think a lot of
people growing up now will only ever have worn polyester clothes they will only ever have worn
shoes that are glued together and made out of polyurethane. They would never know
how amazing it feels to have something that
gets better and better every time you wear it and I think that's really sad.
There are clearly people who are changing large parts of the way they live in order to try and
protect the planet, but those same people are still shopping with fast fashion brands who are
paying lip service.
There's a lot of greenwashing in the world
of clothing right now but I don't think there is any doubt in my mind that the direction of travel
is towards consuming less, consuming only better things and that is because we are all aware that
the planet we live on is under threat. We are living in a climate emergency
and if we don't change our habits we will wreck the planet for good.
I would rather have a tiny handful of incredibly precious things that
were beautifully made and got better and better with age. I've got clothes that were my dad's,
I've got clothes that were my grandad's, they're really precious because I know
that they lived in these things and again I think that adds value to the things we own.
These shoes took time to wear in you know they've developed
character by the wear that they've had from me.
Everyone seems to have been pulling their old shoes out of the wardrobes,
our repair service is actually busier than it's ever been.
Well I guess maybe people have got time to think about these things.
Time to value what they've got.
Time to time to take stock.
We get them incredibly damaged, the dog's got hold of them ripped it to bits,
somehow they're thinking "how the hell can we fix that?" but they do find a way of fixing it.
The goodyear welting process is designed so that they can be easily resoled and re-healed.
New soles as these ones have. Indeed yeah.
I think they've been resoled once. That's equally as important to us as selling new pairs.
Repairing feels to me like an act of kindness to the planet, every time you
fix something you are reducing the number of new
things that need to be made and that's a really wonderful and powerful thing that we can all do
and also every time you fix something it to me becomes more valuable. I have more investment in
this thing and I do fix things myself. I darn my sweaters I patch things and every time I
go through that process I love the thing more, but you can't fix things that aren't made well.
Just like your shoes, our clothes are made in a way that they can
be disassembled and put back together and be just as good as they were at the very beginning.
People feel trapped in this cycle of buying cheap disposable things because they don't feel like
they can take that step and that was what we tried to do with Community Clothing was to try
and find a way of making really high quality locally made clothes that support good jobs in
these communities and make it affordable to people because it's still relative to the very very cheap
brands it's still relatively expensive. We say in our adverts our things are affordable but people
say well you know 35 pounds for a sweatshirt isn't affordable I can buy one for 20 quid, I said well
yeah you can but question what's gone into it and question who's been paid what to make it.
We need to show people more about what it is that goes on inside our factory
it's also really important we attract younger and excited individuals into this business,
whether it's making textiles here in Lancashire whether it's making footwear
in Northampton you know it's a fantastic industry to learn it's a trade and they
actually are making something of value, something that will be worn by people all over the world.
Northampton is a shoe town, Blackburn is a cotton town
that sense of identity is important to to people too and I am convinced that people
who come and learn to make something will feel happier and more satisfied with their life than
those people who go to work every day and pick products out of a basket for an online retailer.
I think there are a lot of young people who are very committed
to living in a way that is positive for the planet. We have to go back
to a way of life where we see the things we buy as things we ought to keep and cherish
and I feel like that is that is starting to happen but we've got a long way to go yet.
I think if people you know pay a little bit more, the most that they can afford and buy something
that has been made well, ie a pair of shoes from Northamptonshire and clothes that you make here in
Lancashire, they'll treasure them, keep them and they'll become items that they'll really love.
Yeah, buy fewer things and buy good things
and keep them and cherish them and repair them and that the solution.