With Christmas around the corner the continued struggle to find toys for Lucan has reached a frenzied crescendo. The amount of time and research we have put into finding anything he would like to play with must extend over weeks, with very little return. I am not sure that we have, even now, resolved what to get Lucan for Christmas.

There was a time when Hornby, Kiddicraft and Meccano all manufactured in the UK but sadly these, and many others, have relocated their manufacturing and/or been consumed by bigger foreign companies. Of course 80% of all toys are now made in China but not all European countries have suffered the same fate as the UK; Germany, Denmark and parts of Eastern Europe all still have a thriving manufacturing sectors.

So what happened here?

The Americans first succumbed to the lure of cheaper manufacturing costs in the 1960. Mostly importing from Japan and then by the end of the 80’s their imports were dominated by China. The UK followed this trend and the mid 90’s we had caught up with the Americans in closing our factories and importing the vast majority of our toys from the Chinese.

However, it is not all bad news. Orchard Toys have been flying the flag for British games for a long time now and, what is best is that there products are readily available. Alongside these are Dice Maestro, Zombie and others also producing card-based games. Merrythought is also a famous name making high quality, highly collectable, teddy bears for over 80 years.

But what is more exciting still is that there are signs of ‘green shoots’ growing in the wasteland of British toy making. In 2012/13 Airfix bought some of their production back from China in the form of their junior Quick Build Kits. So, indeed, have Trunki, the makers of the ride-on luggage of Dragons Den fame. This may be jumping the gun slightly but could this be the start of a once great British toy industry’s resurrection? Maybe/maybe not, but it does go to prove that we have capacity to make mass-market plastic toys. We only wish there was more.

As for this year, it is looking like Lucan’s stocking is not going to be bulging with British made toys as we would have hoped. This is obviously a real shame and perhaps one of the biggest tragedies of our project to buy British.

–    Emily

Shepherd Neame are playing host to our Christmas drinks reception this Friday (13th December 2013) and have kept a small number of last minute tickets back for our blog and Twitter followers. It is a very informal affair with the intention of raising a glass to those that we have met this year, and also raising some money for charity. The event is free to attend (RSVP is strictly necessary), all we ask is that you make a donation on the evening to The Prince’s Trust.

Join us for a P-up in a Brewery!

If you would like to join us at the remarkable Shepherd Neame brewery in Faversham, Kent next week please RSVP here: https://britishfamilychristmas.eventbrite.co.uk. Tickets are limited and available on a first come first serve basis only.

– James & Emily

Thanks to the sponsors of our drinks reception: City of Zombies

We would like to thank Matt Tidbury for sponsoring this event and helping us raise even more for The Prince’s Trust.

Matt is the designer and creator of City of Zombies, a new cooperative British made board game that empowers children to practice existing  numeracy while learning new skills and strategies.

Matt will be there on the evening with demo copies of his game.

City of zombies is available to buy online here: www.cityofzombies.com

My lovely wife has given me my Christmas present early this year – a 1952 Singer 99K sewing machine. The reason for this is that my leather goods are selling pretty well online and I really need to speed up production if I want to keep up with demand. It was thought that a sewing machine might take some of the laborious hand-stitching out of some of the bigger items… once I have learnt how to use it that is.

The machine arrived yesterday and the old cliché “They don’t make-em like that anymore” immediately came to mind.   With its japanned black cast-nickel body and ornate gold fleur-de-lis patterning it is a fantastically tactile machine which looks as good, and works as well, as the day it came of the production line.  Singer was originally an American company and is now under Swedish ownership, however, my little machine is proudly stamped ‘Made in Great Britain’. It was actually made in Kilbowie in Scotland.

A bit of history: Singer Company opened their first UK factory in Glasgow in 1867 but by the 1870’s demand outstripped supply and plans were drawn up the erect a new super-factory. In 1882 Singer began construction of their 46 acre factory site in Kilbowie, at the time the largest Singer factory in the world.

During the Second World War Singer continued to produce sewing machines but in smaller numbers to in order to supply munitions. The machines they did make, however, were also deemed important for the war effort for making army uniforms and for members of the public to ‘make do and mend’.

At the height of its production in the mid 1960’s, Singer employed over 16,000 workers. However demand declined rapidly after that and in just 10 years this dropped the just 5,000, following a decade of compulsory redundancies.  Financial problems and lack of orders quickly forced the world’s largest sewing machine factory to close in June 1980, bringing to an end over 100 years of sewing machine production in Scotland. The factory, including its iconic clock tower, was finally demolished in 1998.

It is a sad end to a fine manufacturing heritage for this area of Scotland. However, it is testament to the quality of manufacture that took place in this factory that so many of these machines, including my own, are still in use today.

Prepare for a shameless plug of my online store here: www.rawleather.co.uk
Orders placed before 13th December will be guaranteed to arrive before Christmas… and may be stitched with a British made Singer sewing machine.  (Sorry, that really was a shameless)

– James

So we have had another attempt to make a vlog (video-blog). The results are better than the first but we are still learning the technical stuff so please bare with us. This video includes 10 tips to getting the best tree possible.

Our mission was to put together a fully finished Christmas tree using only British made decorations. This would seem, on the face of it, to be an extremely tough ask given that the majority of the usual Christmas stuff if imported. We were nervous that it might not be possible… but we believe that this years tree is better than ever!

Here is the evidence:

Most of the decorations came from Folksy which has 1000’s of pages of British-made Christmas bits-n-bobs. Arguably too much, as it took us hours to filter through them all. In the end, however, we found some fantastic stuff. The paper chains are from John Lewis’s Christmas collection and look great but the surprise of the season so far it the British made tinsel. A company called Festive make a wide selection of different tinsels in their factory in South Wales. However, it must be noted that when we contacted them to try and buy some directly they were less than festive over the phone. They do stock some of the major supermarkets though.

Looking back we are very proud of what we achieved with the British Family Fayre. The culmination of 3 months of the most stress we have ever felt as a family and the day it’s self was a blur of activity for us. Thankfully there was someone with a camera to capture the little moments we missed. Thank you Russell from Design Surgeons for putting this fantastic video together for us.

If you came to the fayre in 2013 I hope this brings back memories of a fun day for you too. See you in 2014!

I have just read a wonderful article in The Engineer about John Elliott, the founder of Ebac, which describes him as the Anti-Dyson. This is both a comical but astute comparison. If you wish to read the full article please do so here (you will not be disappointed):

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/in-depth/interviews/ebac-founder-john-elliott/1017460.article

We have had the opportunity to meet the man himself on a number of occasions, not least at our British Family Fayre event at which Ebac Ltd exhibited. He is, as described in the article “a straight-talking, no-nonsense northerner” and a wonderfully outspoken critic of the state of British manufacturing. He also has some suggestions to sort the issues with UK industry that are sometimes, well… out-there. However, I loved this comparison between Mr Elliott and Mr Dyson because there is a real truth to that.

John Elliot is all about making good quality but basic white-goods and selling them at a reasonable price. He makes his stuff in the UK, pays his staff a fair wage and his company makes a reasonable profit. James Dyson sells premium priced, design-led, products to British consumers that are made in the Far East at, what must be assumed, considerably more profit than had he paid British workers. Despite this Mr Dyson earlier this year, without any sense of irony, called for the UK government to do more to protect British manufacturing. Contrast this with the fact that Mr Elliott has recently given is business away to a foundation that protects the jobs of his employees forever. I know which of these two entrepreneurs I would rather listen to when it comes to sorting out British manufacturing.

The article closes by saying suggesting that British manufacturing would likely be far better off if there were more like John Elliott, and never a truer word was said.

– James