Open one of our bags and look along the inside seam, or check the leather tab at the back of an apron’s neck strap, and you will find a small stamp: two or three initials and a number. The initials belong to whichever of the four of us made it. The number is the run it came from.
People sometimes assume this is a marketing idea. It started as something much more practical.
Who made this?
When there were fewer of us, there was never any question about who had made something. With four people and bags that look identical from the outside, it became surprisingly hard to tell. A bag would come back for repair with a strap pulling loose, and we would all look at the stitching and quietly hope it was not ours.
That is not a good way to run a workshop. So we started stamping, and now, when something comes back, the person who made it is the person who looks at it first.
What it changes
It changed more than we expected:
- Faults get traced properly. If three bags from one run come back with the same problem, we can tell whether it was the hide, the pattern or one person’s stitching on one afternoon.
- The person who made it learns from it. Hearing that a handle you stitched in the spring has failed is uncomfortable, and it makes for very careful handles in the autumn.
- Nobody rushes the last bag of the day. It is harder to hurry something with your initials on it.
What it does not mean
It does not mean one person makes a whole run of two hundred. Runs are split between the two benches, and in a busy week a bag might be cut by one of us and stitched by another. When that happens, both sets of initials go on, which is why some of the stamps look a little crowded.
It also does not mean anyone is blamed. Repairs are done at cost whoever made the original, and the two-year guarantee is the workshop’s promise, not one person’s.
The stamp itself
Each of us has a set of small brass letter punches. The leather is dampened, and the initials are struck in by hand with a mallet, the way makers’ marks have been pressed into good leather goods for a very long time. The aprons are canvas, so their initials go on a small leather tab stitched into the neck strap.
If you have one of our bags, have a look. And if it ever needs attention, those initials tell us exactly who should be looking after it.
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