Our Latest Impact Update
Our Latest Impact Update
2024 was a cracker for Community Clothing and our social mission, helped in no small part by the tens of thousands of you whom the team and I met and spoke to at book talks, festivals, pop-ups and other in-person events throughout the year. It was genuinely a pleasure to hear so many of you say many fantastic things about our work. And thanks for all of the letters and cards, too; it is genuinely heartwarming to receive them. This past year, you have supported us in record numbers, with almost fourty thousand of you placing orders with us this year alone (that’s about five times the number it was just two years ago!).
Between you all, you’ve bought a staggering almost fifty thousand pairs of socks (they are really good socks, so maybe not that staggering after all)! The staff at our two sock factories are absolutely cock-a-hoop, and have been working flat out to try and keep up with demand, as have the almost two thousand people who make the clothes we sell at the forty-seven other brilliant UK factories we work with.
As most of you know, we are a social enterprise, and creating good skilled work here in the UK is the primary measure of our success. And 2024 has been another phenomenally successful year. As of a couple of weeks ago, when we added up the numbers created, we had hit a brilliant 397,024 hours of work created. So, thank you all for your continued support. Every sock, t-shirt, jumper, pair of chinos, jeans or undies you’ve bought from us has helped to increase the positive impact we’re having in communities right across the UK, but most especially in Lancashire, Yorkshire, the East Midlands, the south of Scotland and south Wales, areas with some of the highest levels of social and economic deprivation in the country. Places where skilled work really matters. So thank you. It’s a brilliant thing you’re all doing.
But its not just good work we’re proud of creating in 2024, we’re proud to have made good clothes too. Global big business continues to push the idea that we constantly need new things in our lives at ever-increasing rates. Phones, furniture, homewares, clothing, the idea of new is beamed into our consciousness thousands of times a day. That big Swedish maker of bolt together furniture claimed in its billboards it would have something new every time we visited. One notorious Chinese fast fashion business is reputed to have launched over three-quarters of a million new products this last year alone, most of them churned out by AI design bots and thrown together in the cheapest way possible. Constant newness has systematically driven down the quality of the things we buy and is a disaster both for us as consumers (our homes and wardrobes are full fo garbage) but also for the planet (we make, consume and throw away at the most alarming rate, all of it with a huge environmental cost). Never mind the quality, feel the newness seems to be the mantra. Almost all businesses have forgotten that selling something good quality is a viable business strategy. But we haven’t. At Community clothing you could count on two hands the number of new products we launched in 2024, and each and every one was designed to meet a specific need, developed with great care from known materials, in partnership with our great quality factories, and rigorously tested by me and the team.
The brilliant fisherman’s jumpers which I've been testing for a couple of years now, launched in late November sold out in record time. The Frank & Frances long raincoats made in brilliant British Millerain fabrics are proving hugely popular (perfect for yesterday’s walk!). The plastic-free sportswear launched in January, after years of painstaking development, has shown the world there is an alternative to using oil-based materials, even in an area of clothing that has been almost exclusively oil-based for close to half a century.
In 2025, just as in 2024, you’ll find very little new from us, but what new things we do launch will have a reason and purpose for their existence, and they’ll be good. Make good things that people need (not things we’ve been conned into thinking we want), make them as well as it is possible to make them, and make them here. That’s our mantra.
Here’s to keeping more jobs alive in 2025 (I’m making a habit of getting poetic in these New Year emails) - and here’s to creating loads of new ones.
Wishing you all a wonderful year.
Patrick
2024 was a cracker for Community Clothing and our social mission, helped in no small part by the tens of thousands of you whom the team and I met and spoke to at book talks, festivals, pop-ups and other in-person events throughout the year. It was genuinely a pleasure to hear so many of you say many fantastic things about our work. And thanks for all of the letters and cards, too; it is genuinely heartwarming to receive them. This past year, you have supported us in record numbers, with almost fourty thousand of you placing orders with us this year alone (that’s about five times the number it was just two years ago!).
Between you all, you’ve bought a staggering almost fifty thousand pairs of socks (they are really good socks, so maybe not that staggering after all)! The staff at our two sock factories are absolutely cock-a-hoop, and have been working flat out to try and keep up with demand, as have the almost two thousand people who make the clothes we sell at the forty-seven other brilliant UK factories we work with.
As most of you know, we are a social enterprise, and creating good skilled work here in the UK is the primary measure of our success. And 2024 has been another phenomenally successful year. As of a couple of weeks ago, when we added up the numbers created, we had hit a brilliant 397,024 hours of work created. So, thank you all for your continued support. Every sock, t-shirt, jumper, pair of chinos, jeans or undies you’ve bought from us has helped to increase the positive impact we’re having in communities right across the UK, but most especially in Lancashire, Yorkshire, the East Midlands, the south of Scotland and south Wales, areas with some of the highest levels of social and economic deprivation in the country. Places where skilled work really matters. So thank you. It’s a brilliant thing you’re all doing.
But its not just good work we’re proud of creating in 2024, we’re proud to have made good clothes too. Global big business continues to push the idea that we constantly need new things in our lives at ever-increasing rates. Phones, furniture, homewares, clothing, the idea of new is beamed into our consciousness thousands of times a day. That big Swedish maker of bolt together furniture claimed in its billboards it would have something new every time we visited. One notorious Chinese fast fashion business is reputed to have launched over three-quarters of a million new products this last year alone, most of them churned out by AI design bots and thrown together in the cheapest way possible. Constant newness has systematically driven down the quality of the things we buy and is a disaster both for us as consumers (our homes and wardrobes are full fo garbage) but also for the planet (we make, consume and throw away at the most alarming rate, all of it with a huge environmental cost). Never mind the quality, feel the newness seems to be the mantra. Almost all businesses have forgotten that selling something good quality is a viable business strategy. But we haven’t. At Community clothing you could count on two hands the number of new products we launched in 2024, and each and every one was designed to meet a specific need, developed with great care from known materials, in partnership with our great quality factories, and rigorously tested by me and the team.
The brilliant fisherman’s jumpers which I've been testing for a couple of years now, launched in late November sold out in record time. The Frank & Frances long raincoats made in brilliant British Millerain fabrics are proving hugely popular (perfect for yesterday’s walk!). The plastic-free sportswear launched in January, after years of painstaking development, has shown the world there is an alternative to using oil-based materials, even in an area of clothing that has been almost exclusively oil-based for close to half a century.
In 2025, just as in 2024, you’ll find very little new from us, but what new things we do launch will have a reason and purpose for their existence, and they’ll be good. Make good things that people need (not things we’ve been conned into thinking we want), make them as well as it is possible to make them, and make them here. That’s our mantra.
Here’s to keeping more jobs alive in 2025 (I’m making a habit of getting poetic in these New Year emails) - and here’s to creating loads of new ones.
Wishing you all a wonderful year.
Patrick
