Last week someone here posted a list of welted shoe and Shetland knitwear makers, partly to make the point that "just one line made in UK" is a common dodge. I said I would check them. Here is what came back.
Ten new names, nine listed, one rejected.
Knitwear, which turned out to be the actual gap
Shoes were already well covered. Knitwear was not, and the comment made that obvious.
Jamieson's of Shetland runs the only commercial wool mill on the islands, at Sandness. Fleece is graded, scoured, dyed and spun there, and the knitting happens on the islands too.
Harley of Scotland has been on the same plot in Queen Street, Peterhead since 1929. It was a herring yard before they bought it.
Bosie is North East Scotland, a family in the trade since 1929, producing in Scotland.
Howlin' is the interesting one. Antwerp label, but the knitwear has been made in Scotland since 1981. Their lighter jersey and towelling pieces name no country, so that entry carries a partial badge instead of a full one.
William Lockie was already on the list before the thread, for what it is worth.
Shoes
Goral moved the family workshop from Poland to Sheffield in 2005 and makes every pair there start to finish.
Berwick makes in Almansa. All 48 products on their own site say so.
Vass works out of a Budapest workshop, handmade only.
J.M. Weston marks 342 of its 783 products "Fabriquรฉ en France ร Limoges". All 24 derbies carry it and not one of the 67 shoe trees does, so that one is partial too.
Baracuta was exactly the case described in the comment. Their own product copy says the G9 Harrington has been designed and made in the UK since 1937. Nothing else in the range says anything, and the bags and belts are made in Italy.
Gola did not make it
Their about page is all heritage. A small factory in 1905, plimsolls on 1970s pitches, "an iconic British brand". Nowhere does it say where the shoes are made today. That describes a design lineage, not a factory, so Gola went onto the not listed page with the reason written out.
On New Balance, which came up in the same comment
The Flimby factory is real and the Made in UK line is genuine. It still stays off, because the directory lists European brands and New Balance is American. That is a scope decision rather than an evidence one, and it seemed more honest to say so than to quietly drop it.
Two things that nearly went wrong
goral.co.uk is a parked domain with a for sale banner on it. The real site is goral-shoes.co.uk. Had I only tried the obvious address I would have written off a working Sheffield manufacturer as untraceable.
The Vass site footer reads "Made in Budapest by WordPress Expert". That is the web developer. The actual evidence sits on their about page. A "made in" in a footer usually belongs to the agency, not the product.
Ten leads, nine held up. That is a better hit rate than my own research usually manages, so if you know a knitter or shoemaker I have missed, the same offer stands.
Disclaimer: browle.com is mine. None of the ten brands above is monetised, though 7 of the 721 entries do carry an affiliate link, so it is a project that can earn money rather than a pure hobby. No ads and no third party code on a normal page view.
Hey huppakee. Thanks for your feedback. I like your suggestion about using llm to practice my English skills. I will most probably try to do so. I believe it could be quite more efficient rather than using those common apps like babble or dualingo, because it the LLM can be told to be super-specific to me! As to browle.com: yes, I have been using LLM quite a lot to do the research - as you can see I am now at more than 900 brands that were analysed. I could not have done this research without LLM actually. But, I set the rules, the boundaries- therefore it acts on my behalf. My personal motivation on browle is actually to make us all more aware about our decisions when we buy something. My personal opinion: Europe is a great place to live and to work. We should be proud about what we are, what we do and what we stand for. When I break a small part of this down to "my personal buy behaviour" I try as much as possible to favour EU made products.