‘You can’t bring in robots’: the leather firm handmaking everything from wallets to cigar cases
Source: The Guardian ·
In the third article in a series on high-end British manufacturing, we visit the Ettinger factory in Walsall‘Our town is making jeans again’: reviving jobs and skills in WalesFrom feathers to pet portraits, Rolls-Royce rides high on custom craze“It is all down to attention to detail and everything we do is based around that.”Gary Billingham is demonstrating how the 28 pieces which make up an…
From the source
“It is all down to attention to detail and everything we do is based around that.” Gary Billingham is demonstrating how the 28 pieces which make up an Ettinger wallet are cut from leather using a hydraulic press by the small team at one of Walsall’s last remaining leather goods factories. The edges of the pieces are thinned down so they are ready to be turned, glued and stitched together by hand. Billingham has been at the factory near Birmingham since the 1980s, when “there were three pages in the Yellow Pages” business directory listing leather factories in the West Midlands town. “They were everywhere. It has gone from that to about five factories. It is more like a cottage industry.” About 20 people, mostly women, work carefully and precisely in Ettinger’s factory – a site of leather goods production since the 1890s – with a handful more doing work from home. Robert Ettinger, the company’s chief executive, says the vast majority of its manufacturing process has to be done by…