All Mix Blog

Limited edition Minis to be decked out with Rolls Royce interior touches Reasonable Royal Wedding product alert: Stoke brewery partners with pottery to produce ceramic bottle Life at the Dyson R&D dept sounds pretty fun Retailer to fund UK manufacturing apprenticeships First new MG in 16 years rolls off production line at Longbridge, Birmingham

According to Reuters , Philip Green, the chief of the Arcadia Group, has joined the conversation on UK manufacturing. M&I thinks it is promising that someone of his stature should be considering shifting some production back to Britain. "When the market is as it is you want to manage as near home as you can. That's why there's some debate about UK manufacturing and people actually opening some new factories," Green told the Retail Week conference. "Is suddenly all our production coming back here? No. Is there an opportunity to do some production here? Hopefully there is and we're going to try," Green added. Image from Cooper Stollbrand , Manchester (one of the factories that has recently produced items for Topshop, part of the Arcadia Group)

This superlative retailer of umbrellas and sticks can be found in Holborn, London .

'We don’t want to modernise. We don’t want to go modern, we’re not a heel bar. We’re going back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. There’s a lot of people bringing vintage shoes and we can take them apart and put them back together again. There’s nothing we can’t do to a pair of shoes here.' Ken Hines, cobbler at Well Heeled, Bethnal Green, London E2. Quote from this piece from Spitalfields Life on the work of cobblers in the area. As the tag from many a reputable cobbler reads: ' Shoes worth wearing are worth repairing .' Image from Spitalfields Life

M&I was lucky enough to attend a fascinating talk on manufacturing and its future on Friday afternoon at The Tramshed. First up was Luis de Oliveira, principal of Portugese company De La Espada who talked about ‘decentralised companies’; using local production, small runs and frequent innovation. Oliveira believes this business model to be ‘a decade away.’ Furniture designer Matthew Hilton then told a story about one of his early products - a candlestick made in Charlton, packaged in felt bags from Hackney, sold through the UK retailer Joseph. (If anyone would like to give us one of these, do feel free.) Hilton now works for Habitat and has a global perspective on manufacturing. He illustrated his experience with a video of some Sri Lankans making a chair to his specfications. Being versed in more traditional methods, the Sri Lankans couldn’t quite create the modern style required. ‘Older manufacturing is more forgiving than new methods’ concluded Hilton. Theo Williams , creative...

Another Country? No, still very much to do with products made in the UK, fear not. M&I attended a tastefully modest event at Oliver Spencer 's shop on Lambs Conduit St, London last night. On display was a fine array of understated furniture from Dorset based Another Country . We couldn't hang around for long but enjoyed what we saw and appreciated the hospitable nature of the hosts. Thanks to Oliver Spencer (lovely shop with some excellent clothing on a very pleasant road in WC1N) and Another Country for the invite. The image above is from the excellent Another Country gallery . We took some pictures that are not quite as good and they can be found here .

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A fine selection of retail signage purchased at Clark Bros. Publicity. This wonderful shop can be found at 34/36 Thomas Street, Manchester M4 1ER