It has been quite some year. Community Clothing was established with two main aims: to make great-quality affordable clothes and, by doing so, to create and sustain jobs here in the UK. This year, despite a terrible cost of living crisis, more of you bought our clothes than ever before, creating more work than ever before.

As many of you know, we track the number of hours of work you help us to create. In May this year, that total went past a quarter of a million, then in November it went past a third of a million and, at the time of writing this (just before we stopped for Christmas), the total was 342,432. Thank you for helping us to achieve such an astonishing figure. 

And now we’re creating work in more places than ever before. We launched a line of underwear made in New Tredegar (thank you to the THOUSANDS of you who ordered them - so many, in fact, that we’re still hard at work sewing those pre-orders - sorry to those of you still waiting). We launched trainers made in Bolton, the home of the running shoe, which sold out within weeks (they’ll be back in stock in February, we hope, so do sign up for the back-in-stock alert, there’s quite a queue forming already). We have new knitted accessories made in the southwest of Scotland, in Ayrshire, the home of the bonnet, and fantastic polo shirts made in a factory in Leicester that makes nothing else. Finally, we’ve begun the development of a couple of new products that we hope will be made in a brilliant factory in Northern Ireland. So, no matter where you are in the UK, there’s likely a Community Clothing partner factory not too far away and we couldn’t be prouder of that. 

And we’re doing more in 2024 (I’m a poet and I do know it). In fact, arguably the most exciting product we’ve ever launched will be coming very soon. It's something we’ve been working on for years, so please watch this space.  

Thank you for making this year a record breaker. Here’s to another one next year.

Patrick Grant

Founder, Community Clothing