Made in England
As some of you may know Huddersfield Fine Worsteds (owner of a variety of brands including J&J Minnis and J&G Hardy) has recently been purchased by the American firm HMS International Fabrics Inc. This follows Holland & Sherry’s purchase by the Individualized Apparel Group in 2003.
This in itself isn’t too surprising or disturbing, but the long term effects may be. HFW’s premises at Kirkheaton have been levelled and HMS International is only buying the brands. More and more of Holland & Sherry’s cloths are made in Chile rather than in England. What we worry about is the future and reputation of British cloth. In contrast, the “Made in Italy” brand has protected and developed the industry in Italy – is it time to have more publicity for “Made in England” and to publicise how strict the criteria are to label something as such?
HMS International also owns a Chinese mill but we haven’t seen the output yet to compare with our Italian and British cloths. It will be very interesting to see the quality and more interesting to see how customers react. But we hope that this doesn’t mean that HMS International will start to introduce Chinese made cloth into the books of the HFW brands, because it may hasten the decline of the “Made in England” brand.