Keeping it Real: Our Line in the Sand
Friends, guns, beaters and keepers,
I'm sharing this week's Keeping it Real live from the field in Exmoor - a reminder of exactly what 'for the field' really means.
This week I tested something fundamental about what we're building.
I threw a question out to you all: should we compromise? Should we flex our brand pillars and make our baseball cap in the Far East using sustainable materials?
The response was divided - some of you said get your brand out there, over 108 of you asked where you could buy one.
But here's the truth: I can't sell them.
The cap I'm wearing is a sample from before I really understood supply chain management, before I grasped what "British" actually means. And this just isn't it.
Here's what we're actually doing - and why it matters.
Most brands manufacture anywhere. You're literally wearing "Made in Anywhere" with zero thought about the fact we could be doing it here, giving that money back to our communities.
We're building something different. A brand genuinely for the field, which means manufacturing in the British Isles or field sports-rich countries. That's not marketing speak - it's our line in the sand.
The depth we go to in understanding input origin sets us apart. We champion as local as possible, but where impossible, we have a fallback with rules we will not compromise on.
Take a Spanish Teba jacket, for example. We absolutely will not be making those here - that design originated in the Spanish community. We must manufacture it there.
Perhaps we'll find someone in Europe or the US where the inputs, the manufacturing process, and yes, the livelihoods of both makers and founders, actually align with our pillars.
Until then, it means longer hours and harder choices. It means wrestling with British supply chains when the easier path is right there. But it also means building something that genuinely rebalances the relationship between field and fashion - and that's worth the sacrifice.
This is not a fast journey. Neither is it one we can complete without your passion and belief in what we're building.