Glencroft
Yorkshire Knitwear Brand
Glencroft was established by Richard & Justina Sexton in 1987. Richard had worked in the UK wool and sheepskin industry since the 1960s and had started to see a lot of wool clothing manufacturing being offshored in the 1980s. He set up his own brand to buck this trend, working with mills, factories and tanneries across the UK. For the first 25 years the business focused on wholesale only, supply shops and retailers in the UK and worldwide.
In 2013, son Edward Sexton joined the business and has continued to grow the brand with an increased focus on local manufacture, sustainable materials and responsible business practices. In 2020 we launched ‘Clapdale Wool’, sourcing wool from 7 farms within a 10 mile radius of our Dales warehouse, paying farmers more for their wool than auction price, plus giving them a profit share of all revenue from the project. It’s our ambition to grow Clapdale Wool and one day to have all Glencroft products manufactured entirely from this wool.
What is so amazing about working with British wool? Clapdale Wool is a project started in 2021 with the help of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Sustainable Development Fund to create wool products – hand knit yarn, jumpers, accessories – from wool sourced from within a 5 mile radius of Glencroft’s home of Clapham, Yorkshire Dales.
A random connection led to a conversation in mid 2021 with Maria Benjamin and Zoe Fletcher at the Wool Library who had managed to create yarn with their own Herdwick sheep using a variety of scourers, carders, combers and spinners across Yorkshire. We realised we could make our own wool as long as we started with 500kg – the minimum quantity we could get commercially scoured. Very soon after that we got in touch with the Yorkshire Dales National Park to help us get the project going, picked up wool from two local farms we’ve known all our lives and started the process that would result in Clapdale Wool!
From the start we wanted this to be sustainable and create a circular economy here in the Yorkshire Dales, so we paid farmers a minimum of £1 a kilo for their clip – enough to cover the price of shearing regardless of the breed – and will give a share of 10% of the profits we make back to them. We want to grow the wool economy to benefit everyone involved, starting with those on our doorstep.
Working with British Wool (wool board):
We’ve used British Wool in our knitwear since we began in 1987. We’ve been proud to be able to use the British Wool label and be able to tell customers that our jumpers are different to many others out there – they are made entirely in the UK from British materials. This story is important to our customers, many of whom sell to people interested in British authenticity – such as tourists visiting shops we supply in the Scottish Highlands, or British focused shops overseas.
We’ve always wanted increased traceability however and this is what spurred on our Clapdale Wool project. Customers would ask which farms the wool came from, and which breeds, and why we didn’t have this information despite using 100% British wool.After sorting the wool independently the first year (as that was the only option at the time), we are excited to be able to work with British Wool from our second year onwards to make Clapdale Wool officially ‘traceable British Wool’.
Working with local farmers allows us to connect our business directly with the local community and the local area. We aren’t just a ‘Yorkshire’ brand trading on all the beauty and history of the countryside but then using imported materials, we’re a ‘Yorkshire’ brand right down the roots of the products we sell. This is important for our ethos and our desire to be as sustainable a business as possible. We are aware how this fantastic story needs to be better communicated to our customers – on labelling, marketing and on social media. As a small business this is somewhere that is short on resource and an area we are actively trying to push.
If any/ what have been your challenges with working with British wool and a local way of working? We have had many individual challenges including manufacturing and sourcing wool as historically there hasn’t been a lot of wool available. We describe ourselves as very much middle of the ground producers, creating affordable jumpers so we want to make our garments as accessible as possible while being fully traceable. At first British Wool couldn’t provide this for us but in 2021 this problem was solved so we now work with them.
Working with British Wool (wool board):
As mentioned briefly above, British Wool didn’t have the ability to provide us with traceable wool back in 2020 when we first ran our Clapdale Wool project so we had to do it independently. However this problem was solved by 2021 so we could work with them on our next batch. The process for us to pay farmers more for their wool is slightly disjointed due to the way that British Wool must operate – so they pay the farmers what they are able to pay for traceable wool then we ‘top up’ that figure to £1 a kg directly.
It also takes a while. Farmers shear between June and September up in the Dales which is then picked up by British Wool. As this is the busiest time of the year then it can be January before British Wool is able to process our wool and release the lot to us. Although I expect that can improve.
Manufacturing yarn from our wool has presented a few challenges.
Our local breeds are quite coarse so we need to worsted spin the wool to ensure it’s soft enough
Many of our local breeds haven’t been used in clothing ever. The local factories we use – carding, combing, spinning – have no experience of using these breeds. As a result the first year we did it we found the addition of a small amount of Teeswater caused some minor issues in spinning as the fibre length was long compared to all the other breeds used. For the second batch we removed the Teeswater from the blend.
A similar issue had the first time we tried to produce tweed cloth entirely from the Dalesbred breed of sheep. Firstly we found the fibre was too long to woollen spin as it was so we had to send it be cut, a cost we hadn’t anticipated. And then when it came to spinning we found that the spinners could not achieve the minimum fibre thickness the weaving mill we were planning on using required for their machines. The wool was just too coarse so we to blend it with some Cheviot wool, losing some of the traceability of the final product.
What gauge of Knitwear do you sell? i.e fine gauge 10-12gg or more chunky knits such as 7-5gg? We focus on chunky knitwear, 5gg mostly with some 7gg. You can’t really do much finer than that with the British Wool we use, plus we find it then makes a more unique product as there is a lot of imported fine merino knitwear around. Making it 5gg makes a differentiator for us. We would love to do even thicker 3gg knits but there doesn’t seem to be the machinery to do this anymore. We have recently made a 5gg jumper (the Thwaite), but made it in a way to look a bit like a 3gg jumper.
What weaving looms do you use and how many do you have? We are not a manufacturer, we work with Mallaliues of Delph to commission weave for us.
Do you find a lot of push back in the industry in terms of working with British wool?
Most of our manufacturers we choose because they already work with British wool so there’s no issue.
However we recently switched our wool insoles to 100% British wool. We had asked our manufacturer if they could switch to British wool from imported but they did not know how. So we went out and found a British wool pile manufacturer and put them in touch with the factory that cut and printed our insoles. We pushed it through by committing to a volume to enable our factory to buy from the pile manufacturer. If we hadn’t done this it would never have happened.
We have over the years also asked for British wool from manufacturers and been told it wasn’t possible or the material wasn’t there for the intended purpose. Such as the availability of 100% British wool tweeds or softer 100% British wool that could compete with imported lambswool. However this is changing and we’re finding more factories having to work with British wool as customers demand it.
Do you find that customers are becoming more interested in British wool? Yes we deal with a small niche of people who do love British wool. But it is a small niche. Most consumers we speak to don’t have a clue there’s a difference in the wool you can purchase or what British wool is. They don’t understand why it is often coarser than other wool they have found and the unique smell is something that we do get complaints about – as well as people saying they love it. So much so that we made a video about it a few years ago!
The more brands and British Wool can do to really highlight what British wool is, and also traceable British wool, the better.
It’s easier for us to tell the story of our Clapdale Wool – as it is so unique to us – than it is to tell the story of regular non-traceable 100% British wool. It’s something we’re always looking to improve and keep in regular touch with British Wool to support them and work with them on everything they are trying to do.
On a scale of 1- 10 (1 being the lowest and 10 excellent) how much do you think your business has improved in the below areas as a result of good working practices and environmental standards?
Waste Production - 8 (off-cuts, production)
Plastic Pollution - 5 (packaging)
Water Waste - 5 (dyeing and finishing)
Energy Consumption - 5 (shipping, machinery etc)
Do you have any hero farmers or people in your supply chain you would like to highlight? We do work with one of the farmer who supplies fleeces for our Clapdale Wool quite a lot also on our marketing and photography. John, Judith and William Dawson of Bleak Bank Farm. For example when we recently spoke to BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today programme they asked to also speak to a farmer and we knew we could take the journalist up to Bleak Bank farm where John would be able to give them an insight into the wool industry from the farmer’s perspective.
* I think that storytelling, marketing and design is so important to the end products. In fact it’s a frustration as a small business that we can’t spend more time and money on that. Your product can be the most traceability produced in the world, but if people don’t hear about it then it can fade into oblivion.
We are looking at ways – online and offline – we can improve this for our Clapdale Wool so we can compete with the bigger brands that may not be more traceable than us but can tell a better story louder than we can.