Interview by Caroline Issa
Portrait by James Anastasi

CI This project started from a very personal place – your son’s acrylic school sweater. How did that spark a business initiative?

JMD I’d been thinking a lot about British wool – we’ve had it in our range since 2015 – and I was seeing newer brands like HERD doing brilliant things with it. I wanted to go beyond celebrating British craftsmanship, which John Smedley has been championing for decades, to the supply chain that goes into making products. I’d also just met the team at the Great British Wool Revival, whose mapping tool [a map of over 200 different brands that use British wool, pinpointing farmers who sell their wool to brands and spinners who can work with British wool] is brilliant, but was on the verge of disappearing because they’d lost sponsorships. John Smedley took over the sponsorship of the mapping tool to ensure that it continued to exist. Then, I was buying my son’s school uniform, and there was no option but to order a 98% acrylic jumper. I understand school uniforms have to be durable, but it seemed like such a contradiction to be advocating for sustainable, traceable British wool at work, but contributing to the problem I wanted to solve at home, to say, “See you later, Logi, you’re going to school in plastic.”

CI Not many managing directors would say, “Let me take this on, and make it my business’s problem too”. How did you start thinking about the project practically?

JMD From a business point of view, it helped us solve two different problems that any manufacturing business has. One is the fact that people don’t consider the full supply chain. Transparency and authenticity are important to us, so educating these students about the provenance of the fibre and production in the UK was a no-brainer. Secondly, we need to inspire young people to consider careers in manufacturing and supply chain roles. Beyond design, there are so many positions that students don’t even know exist – linkers, knitters, spinners. 

CI Wool is more expensive, and it takes longer to produce than acrylic. How are you dealing with that? 

JMD It comes down to durability, because there is no denying the initial expense. For many families and schools, price informs the decisions that they make, because uniforms have to be affordable. And yet, all school uniforms used to be made from British wool – there was an institutional change between the 1970s to 1990s, where everyone offshored their production, and that quality declined. A British wool jumper is going to last – it has natural wicking properties, so the child is not going to get as hot and sweaty, meaning you don’t have to wash it so often. The initial pricing structure might be higher, but the item could last for generations.

CI Did you begin with one school? Were they open to the idea? 

JMD They were really open. Six schools in Derbyshire want to run this project, and we’re only limited in scope by the practicalities of how many children we can actually take to the wool farm. The reception to the idea of getting students interested in sustainable design and in making their own decisions over what they might choose to wear was really good. As more schools get on board, it will change the scalability and dramatically impact the price.

CI With Brexit and American tariffs, there are constant challenges. How are you dealing with shrinking skill sets in recruiting, but also within the wider supply chain? 

JMD It’s hard, because you’ve got an ageing workforce on one end, and shrinking volume on the sales end. One problem we don’t have is the supply chain issue, because we have long-standing partnerships: we have worked with New Zealand merino wool farms for over 70 years now – the same farmers and generations of families delivering our wool. If you want to take a stance on British wool, you can’t just build your story around the idea that magically the yarn gets delivered and here we are knitting, turning it into jumpers. How do I get a teenager interested in becoming a linker or a knitter? The easiest thing would be to think, “Okay, I’ve got sales volumes declining. I’ve got a British workforce who are ageing out, and it’s getting more and more expensive to have a British workforce.” These factors are why most brands end up outsourcing. It is a very tough job to do, but I’m firmly committed to finding a way through that challenge. 

CI With the school project, which I hope will become a national talking point, you’ve collaborated with brands like Wales Bonner. This is a beautiful way of bringing a heritage British brand into a relevant space. What do you hope to do in the next few years?

JMD My hope is exactly what you just alluded to, that we can continue to have those moments where people are like, “Who’s John Smedley? How did it happen?” Wales Bonner is a really good example of that. People at our PR agency were asking, “How did this happen?” I’ve been in the company for over ten years now and it’s always felt like a family. I hope to continue the legacy of showing that a heritage brand is not an old dark mill in the middle of Derbyshire. We can do so many things, and we can execute them really beautifully. I was talking to someone the other day, and they were asking, how do you attract both young and older customers? I just don’t think that way, or divide the demographics. John Smedley is defined by quality, and buying into a quality product is universal. What unites everybody across any demographic or country is the desire to buy something that will stand the test of time. I know we can deliver, and I want us to help other brands and businesses bring their manufacturing back to the UK. I have always seen so much capability in our brand, and in our people – they are up for being challenged. 

CI I loved the Bill Nighy collaboration. There is something really sexy about a dark, dank old mill nowadays.

JMD Our office is directly above the mill, and so you feel that the weight of responsibility, the livelihoods and the history that you’re carrying. Every day when I go into work, I walk through the factory, and I talk to all the people who work for us. Many of them have been there for a long time, often for 30 or 40 years. My decade is nothing. The weight of the responsibility and the importance of making sure it continues is never not on my mind. .