Alex from our Commercial Street store has just filed this report from the Albam front line:
“Recently, a few of us shop-floor dwellers were sent to the wilds of the East Midlands in the name of Albam – no, not as sartorial missionaries but as students.
We were actually very privileged to be shown around one of our factories, based in Leicester, by its colourful owner, Kanty.
Inbetween blasts of cricket over the radio static, we saw the processes that create such things as our denim jeans, casual blazers, our soon to be released macs and a host of other outer and legwear pieces.
From the patterns, to the cutting-room, to the riveting machine, to the belt-loop making thing, we could literally see how our clothes gradually take shape and are given life.
From Leicester it was a short hop over to Nottingham to meet the design team, including the prodigal Ray. It was lovely to see original designs for garments I’d just been holding and could now join the dots between imagined piece and finished article.
Indeed, perhaps the biggest thing I took from the whole experience was how few pairs of hands, production-wise, each and every garment passes through before hitting the stores – by my count, five in the factory and five in the studio.
As a result, it really underlined just how tight-knit a group we actually are; how close to source everything we sell is and how lovingly produced it is too.”
Posted by Andy at 10:56am