Mohair socks made in the UK
The hosiery industry in the UK has certainly been through some battles in the last hundred years.
I state a hundred years as our sock knitter was founded in Leicestershire in 1895, initially set up to knit socks for the local market. Due to its dedication to quality, the company steadily grew and gained recognition for its quality products. It is now run by two cousins who are fourth-generation sock knitters still in the same factory.
Going to our knitters, which we do regularly is like stepping back in time, as all our socks are knitted on traditional four-needle machines.
They are knitted in a tube and then each sock is separated, and the toe is closed, this process is still done by hand and often can be a bottleneck in our production.
All our socks are knitted on double-cylinder machines, which allows us to knit socks traditionally. Many socks these days are made on single-cylinder machines, which are capable of a lot of things such as putting pictures and writing on the socks, but these then have to be knitted with a lot of lycra or elastic in, which often makes the sock tops a little bit tight.
We have steered away from these types of socks and continue to produce socks on the older double-cylinder machines making for very comfortable, hard-wearing socks.
Everything is knitted in the natural colour (we call that cream on our website), and then we dye it as a complete sock. Therefore, we do have to have around 240 pairs to make up a dye lot.
240 pairs I hear you ask, that’s an odd amount. I state that as everything in the UK hosiery world still revolves around dozens, so that’s 20 dozen. This number is key to our production, so when we knit socks we will knit 240 small, 240 medium and 240 large in every style in each colour.
Just think about it, if we knit a Sussex (loose-topped socks) in 9 colours (we currently have x 9 available on our website) in x 3 sizes this means we knit 6,480 pairs of socks to restock each option of this x 1 style of socks. Then take into consideration we currently have x 9 styles of socks, that’s a lot of socks to knit.
The socks get dyed in Yorkshire and then back to Leicestershire for pressing and final checking before making their way up to us in Northumberland.
We then pack all our socks by hand and send them on their way to you.
With new colours and styles, we work 1 year ahead of ourselves. Our knitting orders take anything from 6 – 14 months to complete, very much depending on the number of socks we are knitting.
Our ethos, why we knit in the UK
We have seen many of our competitors go overseas to knit their socks and we get phone calls from all over the world from people wanting to knit our socks.
But we believe we have a proven business that supports the UK textile industry. Yes, we could make things cheaper overseas, but we firmly believe that you get what you pay for.
Many of our overseas retailers buy from us as we create a UK-made quality product.
An honest person should have a decent wage
The price has to come into this article somewhere. Often online people comment about the price of our socks.
In the UK, rightly, an honest hard-working person, rightly, get a decent wage and we will support this until the end of time.
Also within the UK we have legislation in place to protect these people and again if this pushes the price of UK production up, this is something we will be fully supportive of it.
We have all read or seen imagery/ videos of how some of our clothing is made overseas and frankly, we want no part of that here at Capricorn Mohair Socks
Looking after people less fortunate than ourselves
Here at Capricorn Mohair Socks, as a business, we believe we must support less people fortunate than ourselves.
This is why over recent years we have donated money to homeless charities over Black Friday weekend rather than discounting.
In the past, we have also donated socks to homeless charities and hopefully made a small difference to somebodies’ lives.
I appreciate we are not going to change the world, but as a business, we can change things for the better in some small way.
Many thanks for your continued support
We are here because of you.
Over the past 17 years, Capricorn Mohair Socks has grown and evolved and we are here because you, our customer also believe in not only the properties of Mohair but also the ethos that the business has been built on.
As we meet many of our customers at shows, both trade and retail we have long conversations and hopefully understand and learn all the time.
I personally ring any customer who is not happy with anything as we are keen to learn, evolve and continue to be one of the leaders of Mohair sock production in the UK.
We can’t thank you enough for your continued support and as we continue to grow, I very much hope you can continue to join us on this exciting journey.
Further reading
1. Capricorn Mohair Socks - our range
