Mulberry announces new approach to sourcing leather
To mark Earth Day 2021 (April 22), leathergoods brand Mulberry launched a new ‘Made To Last Manifesto’.
It said it wanted to “pioneer a hyper-local, hyper-transparent” supply chain and would work with a network of “progressive farmers” who are committed to practices that improve soil health and encourage biodiversity. It said its aim was to establish transparency from farm to finished product.
The manifesto promised a “transformative approach to leather sourcing”. To put this into practice, Mulberry said it would “work in partnership with industry-leading tanneries to develop the world’s lowest-carbon leather, sourced from environmentally conscious farms”.
Mulberry was founded 50 years ago and still makes more than half of its products at its factories in Somerset in the south-west of England. It said those factories are now carbon-neutral and that everyone who works there receives a salary that complies with a fairer work campaign called Living Wage. The leathergoods brand said it wanted all of its suppliers to follow this example with their employees.
Its first ‘farm to finished product’ bags will launch later this year. Mulberry said this would comprise a collection that will “represent the future of our business, establishing a model that we will replicate with our network of trusted partners, laying the foundations for our next 50 years”.
It said bags it made 50 years ago are still in use and that it wanted to make sure bags it makes in the future will last for the next 50 years. It has a restoration team in Somerset that repairs and reconditions around 10,000 bags per year.
It has also established Mulberry Exchange to bring restored, pre-owned Mulberry bags to new owners. “A humble bag can have many lives,” it said. And when any Mulberry bag reaches “the end of the line” and can no longer be repaired and reused, it said it would still buy it back and pass it to one strategic leather manufacturing partner, Scottish Leather Group.
Mulberry explained that used bags would go into Scottish Leather Group’s waste-to-energy programme in Bridge of Weir to help power the production of new leather to make new bags, emphasising the circularity of leather, the leathergoods brand said.
It ended the new manifesto with the statement that a Mulberry bag can come with a promise of regeneration, renewal and reimagination. “A bag can truly play a part in making things better,” it said.
