Everything we make has a two-year guarantee. After that, we repair it at cost for as long as we are still here. The promise is on the front page, and we are asked about it often enough that it seems worth explaining what it actually means.
How it works
Post the bag or apron to the workshop at Unit 4, Sheaf Works, Leeds LS10 1EE, with a note about what happened. It does not need to be a long note. “The strap came off on the bus” is plenty.
Whoever made it has a look first; their initials are stamped inside. Then we email you a quote before we touch anything. If you would rather not go ahead, we post it back and that is the end of it.
“At cost” means the materials, the time at the same hourly rate we pay ourselves, and the postage back. There is no margin on repairs. We are not trying to make money from them, and we are not trying to lose any either.
What usually comes back
After years of doing this, the list is short and fairly predictable:
- Handle and strap stitching, usually where the weight pulls. This is the most common repair and one of the cheapest.
- Corners worn through on bags carried against a hip every day. We patch them with leather from the same run while we still have some.
- Zips. Zips give up before anything else on a bag, which is why we use as few of them as we can.
- Apron ties pulled out of the seam, usually by hanging the apron from a hook by one tie. We reinforce them while we are at it.
What we cannot fix
Some things are beyond a sensible repair. Leather that has been soaked and then dried on a radiator goes brittle and cracks, and no amount of stitching will hold it. Canvas with a burn straight through is usually a new apron. In those cases we say so in the quote, and we do not charge for looking.
Why we do it
Partly because it is the right thing to do with something made from a good hide. Partly because repairs are the best feedback we get. Every bag that comes back shows us how the thing we designed has actually been used, and several details on the current bags exist because of repairs to older ones: the doubled stitching at the base of the handles, the thicker corner panels, the zip we no longer fit.
And partly because a bag someone has carried for ten years, with a new strap and a patched corner, is the best advertisement a small workshop could ask for. It costs us nothing, and it is far more convincing than anything we could write.
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