What a strange summer its been! There aren’t many years when we are making mostly boots all summer long, luckily a lovely pair of long boots with a summer dress is a great look and alot of folks felt their new shoes were the perfect antidote to grey skies!
The photoshoot at Buckfastleigh Steam Railway was such fun! The guys were really helpful and didn’t mind us prancing around on the platform, taking photos and wandering around their machine yards. Its a tremendous place! They take such care of the station and engines, and the people who work there are really skilled - it was so interesting to see a workshop thats on a very different scale to our own, with the massive trains being stripped down and rebuilt in a huge shed crammed with tools. We would highly recommend a visit and a journey by steam- some of our customers a few weeks ago came all the way from Plymouth to Totnes by train, then Totnes to Buckfastleigh by steam train, then walked to our workshop from the station! Apart from those who walk or cycle to see us, I think that’s one of the most environmentally friendly visits we have had if avoiding car travel….

In between us all taking our annual leave here and there, making lots of shoes and having planning meetings (thinking of re-organising the workshop layout to give us more stock space and shift the office around a bit so its cosier this autumn and winter!) we have been working on some more new designs following the launch of the Eco-Tan Accessories and footwear.
We have had some great feedback about the new bags on the website, and have turned our attention to some new belts and boots that we have been mulling over for a while. We are just doing our first test pieces - its a pretty long process, so presently we are at the ‘like that lots but will it stay on your foot?’ stage!- where things get translated from sketches and reworked pattern pieces into basic forms we can try on and play around with.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 8th, 2007 at 1:01 pm and is filed under The Workshop.