Into the Rookery

When I went to Bath, there was one destination that I was eager to see whilst I was in that part of the world. Having been out to Los Angeles with Mulberry on an admittedly razzy trip during awards season, I was eager to contrast that experience with an altogether quieter and gentler side to the brand seen at their factory The Rookery, in Chilcompton in Somerset. The Rookery together with their nearby newer factory The Willows forms the largest manufacturer of luxury leather goods in the UK with over 700 craftspeople working for both sites. These aren’t facts to be spewed for pointless flag waving. In the context of UK’s postwar manufacturing wind-down and in the general movement of shifting luxury goods production away from Europe, these achievements are no mean feat. Numerous publications like the Guardian and the Telegraph have both done in-depth stories on what goes behind the scenes at Mulberry’s Somerset HQ, but it’s impossible to overstate the fact the many on-shore employed hands and hours of work that go into Mulberry’s bags. So I happily spent the day geeking out to what is fast becoming my favourite soundtrack – the hum drum of a leather goods production line as well as snapping away at the hands that have long intrigued me about what makes one garment or bag or shoe better than another.

Mulberry is just about emerging from a time of flux where the headlines have been focused on its profits, its CEO changes as well as its changing pricing structures. However better times await with the coming of former Céline bag whiz Johnny Coca as well as recent announcements that profits are reported to be better than expected.

At the Rookery, guided by Nick Speed, its group production manager, changes are also afoot. I was the first journalist to see the newly implemented linear production lines, based on the idea of lean manufacturing. “Many people think that when they come to Mulberry, they’ll see ten or twelve craftsmen hunched over a wooden table,” said Speed. “But this is proper manufacturing. Although this is a craft business and of course our main priority is quality, we’re also looking for efficiency.” To “lean” things up, instead of say having one person stitching a bag from start to finish, you have a production line dedicated to one style at any given time with over 50 processes laid out from cutting to to inking and edge finishing to stitching and quality checking. Every person has a dedicated role whether it’s stitching pockets, banging in rivets or constructing handles and it makes for a highly productive unit. It’s why Mulberry is currently producing over 50% of its bags in the UK. They make no secrets about their their overseas production taking place in Portugal, Turkey and China because they’re transparent about the fact that it’s currently physically impossible to do it all here. What gets made in the UK are ultimately the styles and collaborations that Mulberry is currently focused on whether it’s the Cara bag or the Lana del Rey bag. The short of it is that UK-made-from-start-to-finish quality ultimately demands a higher price.

Speed first took me up to the development office where patterns are devised for the bags in conjunction with the design team at Mulberry’s Kensington Church Street offices. They’re already working on S/S 16 bags. Paper models and grey felt prototypes are used by the development team to work out the construction of a bag before CAD-like drawings are produced on the computer, ready to be sent down to the programmed laser cutters.

They also house some of the older archive pieces as a way of looking at different construction types. Loves me the Snoopy and Peanuts battered Bayswater…

We were then shown the area where all the leathers are kept. Mulberry don’t own any tanneries and their leathers are bought in mostly from Italy (a tiny percentage of leathers are from the UK). It was interesting to see the tiny marks on the skins that Speed pointed out were either from the cows’ movement or from insect bites on the skin. Some are so faint you could hardly see them. Some are more discernible and are generally not used on the main body of Mulberry’s bags. Texture is appreciated is on skins like the shrunken calf, where deep grain patterns are achieved by deliberate washing. Natural vegetable tanned leather is Mulberry’s most in-demand of skins. Unlike other styles, which are made to order as per the season’s requirements, Bayswater bags in NVT (to abbreviate Mulbz style…) are constantly kept in stock because of their popularity. Save for ostrich, Mulberry tend to shy away from exotics not least because of their newly “less-expensive” price positioning and also because of their lack of traceability. It’s why they now print snakeskin patterns into calfskin, cutting into the skin to achieve the appearance of scales.

We then went onto the factory floor to follow the production line of a new oxblood Cara bag with the lion’s head and heart rivets that are about to go into stores for A/W 15-6. It’s a style that has proved successful for Mulberry (although perhaps not to the heights that the Alexa reached), and after its debut season is now being expanded with different skins and finishes. Oxblood natural leather is also a skin that is becoming part of Mulberry’s “core” grouping of colours.

The first thing you notice about Rookery’s factory floor is the retail prices of bags laminated and in full view of the crafts men and women. “It’s really important for people to understand the prices of the bag – it’s important we treat these products with respect,” said Speed. At £1,500 this particular style of the Cara is at the upper end of Mulberry’s price range and as you discover over 50 different processes go into making it which broken down is that you’re paying £30 per process – and that’s omitting the cost of the leather leather, overheads of the factory and the retail space of Mulberry. And on the subject of cost, many people wonder why are bags more expensive today? The cost of leather has gone on average 20% a year with growing demand from competing brands as well as the automobile industry. Explaining away that £1,500 bag which ismade entirely in the UK with these background price hikes factored in seems somewhat easier.

The other thing you see across the production line of the Cara is that the demographic of craftsmen and craftswomen is varied. Firstly there’s an even split of men and women. Secondly age-wise, where in other factories which I’ve visited, it normally skews towards the 50 yrs plus. Here, you have everyone from aged 18 to 60. That’s down to Mulberry’s oversubscribed and popular apprentice scheme as they bring in six every year at the Rookery (eight at the Willows). “We had a problem with the ageing workforce but we had to make sure we have succession and longevity,” said Speed. “With this linear production line, we can bring people in very quickly and get them manufacturing quite quickly.”

Not unlike the Louis Vuitton facility I saw in Fiesso where technology is blended with hand-crafted know-how, at Mulberry, machine-led efficiency can only really be achieved with the physical presence of crafts men and women, who know how to operate these machines. After the bag has gone through all the processes from cutting to stitching to finishing, with all the fiddly addition of the components (pockets, postman’s lock, linings, handles, buckles etc) in between, it reaches its final triple quality check before it gets bagged up and ready to be shipped. There’s a target board on the wall and on this day, the goal was to make 15. Once they had met their target, someone sounded the horn and cheers were emitted from the craftspeople. Not one had been rejected for its inferior quality. Speed says on average they have 1% returns out of a bag production of 1,1000 per week plus 1,400-1,800 at the Willows. They’re numbers that should be taken seriously again, in context of the manufacturing conditions in the UK. What was once an area flourishing with leather goods production, namely with Clarks shoes who once produced their shoes nearby, now relies largely on Mulberry for industry and future regenerated employment.

And the physical result? A Cara bag that has passed through approximately thirty or so different pairs of hands – all fairly employed and working in superb factory conditions – with Made in England stamped in extra thick font on the base of the bag and as the Mulberry heart on the pocket suggests, made with a lot of love. Everyone was beaming and incredibly proud to show off whatever it was they were doing. Whatever Coca is going to do in terms of creative direction, having the combi-force of the Rookery and Willows and all their craftsmen and craftswomen is already a solid manufacturing base to work from.