Hi, I'm Carmen and you are watching a Yarn Stories podcast. This is part two of our episode with my friend Nu of Hide and Hammer. So if you missed part one, you can go back and watch that. In part two, we're going to be talking more about the business of Hide and Hammer. The business. And what you make, what you do, why you do it, how you do it. All the existential questions. Yes. So would you like to do a quick introduction for the people who are just catching us here?
Well, I think I'm going to change my introduction. Oh, okay. So pay attention. I'm not going to change my name or anything. It's not like, hello, my name is Phyllis Swain-Esquire Bonobo Banana Hammock. As that's what I threatened to call myself when the kids are like, mama. Right. So I'm Nu. Hi. I am the founder and CEO of Hide and Hammer.
Because I think it's really important to mention here straight off the bat that I am not the only reason the business still exists and functions and works really hard. So working with me, we have Charlotte in the office. She's operations manager and everything. She holds it all together. Charlotte's amazing. Charlotte is amazing. And also, if you're a customer, you would have had probably some contact with Charlotte. She's either sent your order or she's answered your questions.
So it's really important to mention. And in the workshop, we have Polly, who I mentioned in the last episode. So get back and watch that. And we have Nancy as well. And then we have our workers too. We have Lisa that stitches our bags and things for us as well. But she lives in Nottingham. She works remotely. She works remotely. So a team of four then. We have a team of four. Sometimes Izzy dips in and out as well and does some work for us too. She works remotely as well.
So yeah, we've got a core team of four. Amazing. Which is kind of like, oh, I've got a big grown-up business. Yes. But as I'm sure we'll get into, it isn't really sustainable to be the only maker. No. To be able to scale to a point of financial stability. Not even financial. Mental stability, I think. I just think about the pandemic and I'm like, I did all of that on my own. Yeah. So talk to us about your products. What is it that you make?
I make products that, I started using this term a while ago, are as life-proof as possible. Okay. Let me explain what that means. When I first started, I was really aware that the products, especially in the crafting industry, that were already on the market, weren't going to be suitable for everyday use. And as we discussed, I take my knitting everywhere. You do take your knitting everywhere. And I'm also not the biggest fan of laundry. That wasn't discussed.
But I'm not the biggest fan of products that are high maintenance. Okay. Or people. Eh, product. And so the whole idea behind Hide and Hammer was that we would create premium to luxury canvas and leather goods that fulfilled the gap in the market. They needed to be washable. They needed to be robust. They needed to go with every outfit, every bag, everything. Um, because, I mean, was it Delia Smith that said life's too short to stuff a mushroom? Maybe.
But that's my kind of, you need, I would like to be able to produce a bag that you don't need to think about. So it doesn't take up your precious brain space. Um, because I just think that's really important. So our core range of bags, the canvas that we use on our core range of bags, the O3s that are designed to go everywhere with you. There's the bag that we started with. You could take the handles off and you can wash it. You can machine wash them.
Um, because when I first started that wasn't available on the market. Um, the leather handles were always, always attached to the bag. Yes. I remember, um, watching some videos about how one could wash some canvas bags by hand. And I remember watching that going, I'm never doing that. Like if I, if mine gets that dirty, like it's probably just going in a cupboard for life. Because not that I don't like to wash or reuse things or keep things alive.
That is actually very important to me, but I was not going to do that. There's only so many patches you can put on a bag to hide the dirt, right? Yeah. Yeah. Pin patches. Maybe that's why pins are such a thing. This is my wine stain pin. This is my child with a permanent marker pin. I mean, that may be where the trash started. Oh my God, we should totally do that. Like a badge of honor. Oh, I survived. X, Y, yes. Okay. So where did you start with your bags? Like what were your first?
So the first ones actually were leather bags. And funnily enough, I started, I talked about this, I think in my, one of my newsletters recently. Um, I made a series of tool rolls for the car company Bugatti. I did leather cases for them, um, that were all hand-stitched, box-stitched cases. And you can tell the difference with box stitching and machine stitching or hands, like other hand stitching, because the joints are seamless. You just have a line of stitching on it.
So it's like proper case making. You get it in old binocular cases and traditional things like that. There's no like physical pointy, oh, do you see? I'll show you some samples later. Um, so anyway, I digress. I had leather left. So I made these and they sold really well. And I made bigger ones and I made like, this is the smallest one. And I made like giant ones. And then I kept going with that. And then people were asking if we could do different things.
And I always wanted to make things out of canvas. And at the time I was driving to and from a friend of mine who I was working for. Um, I used to love driving and you just get so much headspace when you're driving. And I was working out all these problems in my head. And it was amazing because you, I worked out how to fold them and I worked out how to do it. And then I remember like driving home clearly and the Eureka moment.
And I was like, can I get away with going back to her house to use a sewing machine? So that I could do, I didn't have an industrial sewing machine. I didn't have any threads in the right colour. I've just ordered some samples of fabric and I was like, I'm going to make this work. And I just couldn't get the base right. Anyway, we did it. It was lots of driving hours, but we did it. And that actually turned out to be the O3.
So that was the, if you've heard of us, hopefully you will have heard of this bag. It is our most popular bag. We now offer it in a range of three sizes. We've just recently released a large one. So, um, this is our medium size. It's the one we launched with. And I think medium is such a misnomer though, because it's quite a big bag. Well, you can fit a whole, um, worsted weight sweater in it. I mean, yeah. Easily.
So if you are a watcher of the podcast, then you'll have heard us talk about these and show these off before, because me and the team all use these. Um, they are brilliant. And we've just upgraded our canvas as well. This is a brand new one. But yeah, I mean, so is that the base that you're talking about? Yeah. You were like, oh, I can't tell you the headache it gave me. Okay. But what is seemingly, this is the thing, right? The whole thing about the business is that I want it to look right.
And so I make as many of them as humanly possible to make it look right. And then I fit everything else around it. And, um, showing this off. Yeah, crack on. And I think the thing is too, for, I know you get this feedback quite a bit. And I know makers in general tend to, but people see that and be like, well, that's easy. I can make that. Or I can do that. Or like, why am I being charged X, Y, Z for it? But I don't know.
Do you have an estimate of like how many hours of development it took you to make this? It took months. All the prototypes are in our storage locker and there's two big Ikea boxes full of them. Um, to the point where I was politely told that maybe we should look at somewhere else and storing them somewhere else. That's when we got the storage locker. I got boxes and boxes and boxes of prototypes. Not just of these as well.
Like the two boxes of these, but then we've got prototypes of all the other stuff as well. It has to be perfect for it goes to market. And I cannot tell you how many products I've shown to Carmen and she's gone, yes, launch them. And I've said, no, the bag from last summer. I'm still mad about you mean the hot girls on a bag. Yeah. Okay. Also a backpack. That's a pretty good working. There's another working prototype. You've got the working prototype over there.
I've got three or four of the working prototypes. Yeah. Okay. They are really comfy. I need to. Yeah. Okay. Yes. So what you're saying is that you are a crazy perfectionist. Yeah. Like crazy perfectionist and not in a good way. Yeah. In a good way. I mean, these are exquisitely made and everything's really thought about and it's not just. But the thing about it is like, because I'm a crazy perfectionist to start off with. That's why this works now.
Yes. It's why you've been able to scale to a four person team. Yeah. Because a big part of running the business is figuring out your margins. Right. And like efficiency and the productivity and the manufacturing of it. Oh. And the big thing about that is working out that people don't necessarily work to my speed. Yes. That's also a thing. But you'll have thought about how you cut this on a large roll. Yes. Right.
So when you are piecing something, whether that's like a dress pattern or whatever, like you have to think about how you're going to lay that out to make as much use of the fabric as possible. And the amount of fabric each one of them takes is rent free in my head forever. Yeah. And it's that like the way that we do it. I know exactly how many I can get next to each other. And the big part of when I buy canvas is like the width of it, the quality of it.
Yeah. But mostly so that I know that each one of these, we can get X amount out of them. We minimize waste as much as humanly possible. Because that is not only good for the environment, but also the only way a healthy business runs. Right. And we have canvas offcut sales on our website sometimes. And we'll get, it will be the amount of canvas from that year. And there's always such a small amount of it. And it's a personal achievement. Yeah. And we do sell on the canvas.
We do sell on canvas that we no longer use as well, because I'm a big believer in like, we have to keep hold of some of it just in case something goes wrong. And I keep it for 12 months. And then we, you know, we offer it to our customers if they'd like to purchase it. And make things out of it too. And so, yeah, there's a, there was a lot. Do you want to talk a little bit about the sustainability aspect of? Of Hide and Hammer. Hide and Hammer. Yeah. How you feel about what your philosophy is?
Well, I mean, it's the William Morris thing, isn't it? It's that have nothing that isn't beautiful or usable. I can't remember the exact quote, but it's that. I don't know the quote, so I can't help you. You're not. That's another thing that lives. There's so much that just lives rent free in my brain. That one clearly had saying a little bit of rent because you can't remember it right now. Oh, I know.
But it's that like, every Spice Girl lyric that I never listened to, but it was always hummed around school. Oh, yeah. You know? Yeah. I do love the Spice Girl lyric though. The fact that I can remember all of the rap bits of different songs, but I can't remember my daughter's teacher's name. Well, you know, but she doesn't rap. So, you know, that's on her. So the sustainability aspect of Hyde and Hammer, we try to use... So what's your personal philosophy?
Like, because you don't build your brand around this. But where does it start? So it starts with... Interestingly, it all started with that Deadstock leather. Okay. From the Bugatti. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like using everything. I grew up in, you know, the age where you don't waste food. You don't waste food. You don't waste clothes. You don't waste, you know, things. And so I think that had a significant impact on me as a kid.
And I think that when it comes to material cost as well, this is the biggest factor. So at the moment, our biggest outlay is canvas and leather. Yeah. Massive. You take labour out of that. Yes, because labour is always the biggest. Well, no, so this is the thing, right? It is in the UK and America, maybe? Well, most businesses, it is. I mean... But a lot of my competitors... It's really important for me, should I say.
It's really important for me that my staff are looked after, that we pay what we can as a company. Because obviously, you know, if I paid them any more and we didn't have a business, that would suck. That helps no one. Then they wouldn't have a job. And so in the winter, though, they might be quite happy about that because it's really cold in here. So I try and use everything as much as possible. I try and source everything as eco-consciously as possible.
Now, there's a huge caveat to that, which is the leather vegan discussion. And that's not something... Let's get into that. Let's talk about leather. I think this is really interesting and important. Is this where I get cancelled? No. We have a really interesting conversation about leather. We do. Because I would say that most of us, myself included, don't know about leather, really. There's so many different types of leather. There's so many different types of tanneries, couriers, farmers.
Like, it starts with the farmer, right? Yeah. And there's a huge thing where people want the softest leather. That's not always the best, right? It's like wool, right? Oh my God. It's so... The crunchy wool will last you longer. Yeah. And actually, both of the industries are really comparable. You have big business, big industry going hell for leather. The ones that can afford the big marketing budget. Greenwashing, the whole thing. Are we perhaps referring to some luxury handbag brands?
We are, yes. And also, you know, luxury yarn. Yeah. The ones that are in the big shops that can afford to really go for it. Because their margins are tiny. They don't pay their employees enough. And people are disposable. The products are disposable. The animals are disposable. The animals are disposable. And it's bollocks. Sorry. It's absolutely bollocks. The problem with the whole thing is that there's no care. There's no intention. There's no love.
And I'm a really big firm believer in the fact that when you pick up a product for the first time, and that's, you know, you can feel the love. You can feel the care. You can feel the attention in it. And I think it's really important to note that there are three people that make these bags for you. Well, three and a half make some of them. Okay. Back to leather for a second. So what I mean is, like, what I'm going with with that is that I've taught every single person how to edge shave leather.
Okay. Why is that important? It's really important. Because I don't know what that means. So we'll do a little video of it later and we can show you. When you pick up your handle on your O3 for the first time, the outer longer handle, like, you might not notice it, but it doesn't... You mean this one. I do. It doesn't feel rough in your hands. No, it's very soft. Right. And the weight of the leather feels nice and cool to touch.
Because I've spent ages working with the tannery so that we get the right thing. We get the right feel. We get the right touch. It's all veg-tanned hides. And the... Tell me what veg-tanned means, please. It means that there's... So the leather itself is put through a currying process, which is where all of the skins and everything is stretched and scraped and cleaned. And then you go through, like, the dyeing process. And there's loads of different ways of doing that.
You start by, like, scraping the hides out so that everything is flat and level, so you get a really nice surface to start off with. And then, so the commercial leather, and this is slightly more commercial in that aspect, goes into big drums to be dyed. Okay. So there's an even dye process. It's like with yarn when you put them into massive vats, right? So that you get a overall commercially viable... Whatever that means. Repeatable. Repeatable product, yeah.
Consistent. But, I mean, even that, you still get... Every hide of leather we get is a different colour, very slightly. Yeah. Because of the dyeing batch. Well, because it's a natural product. And you don't know what the... You don't know what the weather was like, what the things... Everything is so finite, right? So in... You know what I mean? I know what I mean. Yes. That's it. There's so many variables. That's it. There's so many variables. So the veg tan leather uses less dyes.
It's not a... Sorry, it uses less chemicals to set it to the hides of leather. The process is less taxing on the environment. And this is where the sort of vegan versus leather... And I appreciate that there are a lot of people that choose not to eat meat and not to eat animal products, but they still have leather. And I think it's really important for the distinction that I'm talking about the products that are coming into the market now that actually really quite worry me.
They're not vegetable or animal products. They are masquerading as a vegan leather. Firstly, I think the terms are both wrong. They're not leather. And but mostly the thing I fall out with hugely is the fact that they don't biodegrade. They use an enormous amount of resources to create in the first place. And I'm talking about like water, electricity, and the products themselves have like oil and things in them. So that's all been, you know... Most of them are some plastic, right?
And then most of them, they're all plastic. Because you can't have... Like if you're making leather out of apple skin or leather out of apple skin, you're making a fabric out of a natural product that biodegrades. Excuse me. How are you going to stop that from biodegrading? You have to coat it. In plastic. Okay. Interesting. It's like resin. When you have the coasters and stuff that have flowers from your wedding or whatever it is in it, you cover it with resin to stop it from biodegrading.
Stop the air from getting to it. So it's the same. Like the leather handles that we do, they will get nicer and softer and lovelier all the way through. At some point, you know, if you choose to move your handle on, you can biodegrade it. Like it's biodegradable. It will rot. It will get moldy. It will rot. It will break down. And it goes back into the natural ecosystem, the natural order of stuff, right? But if you've got plastic, the plastic stays there for generations.
And I saw something the other day that was like every toothbrush that you ever owned still exists. Yeah, that's something to think about. There's a lot of plastic, right? There's a lot of plastic, yeah. And plastic didn't, like plastic has been a thing for, like it's within living memory, of course, like the Formica and stuff, like the precursors to it, right? And we existed fine before plastic. And, you know, plastic has some amazing uses. Massively. You know, made things lighter.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really needed to be lighter. Absolutely. I'm just, in this, like, I mean, it's like the medical advancements, the things that it's made accessible for people that need additional support and help. Like it definitely has a place. I'm not on an anti-plastic bandwagon because, you know, I own far too many tripods and all of the things. And I have a whole drawer of Tupperware that I'm slowly moving over to glass. But at the same time, it definitely has a place.
It just, I just don't feel it has a place in leather. Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. I will always choose a natural fiber over a non-natural fiber. And it breaks and it doesn't stretch in the same way and it cracks. I think it's important to illustrate my point. So the, like, for example, if you had a wallet made out of plastic or a plastic coated thing, right? I mean, this is, I was going to show you all of the products that I use every single day because I think that's important too.
But to illustrate the plastic versus leather, pleather argument, this is a piece of veg-tied, veg-dyed leather. It is shaped in the shape of a wallet or it once was a wallet. I have that same wallet, but yours is stuffed to the absolute max. I like, you know what, I like to test my product. And in doing so, I stress them out. This is very well tested.
But if this was made out of a material other than leather, even canvas, canvas would rub and wear in this particular product and the amount of time that I've used it. What would happen is that the, where the rub points, especially because I mean, I've got all sorts shoved in here. You can see these points here where the card is in the back. This would crack and it would degrade really quickly because it's leather. It's stretched to it. It stretches to my life and the use or my uses.
I'm just thinking I don't have mine with me, unfortunately, but I could show off mine. I mean, it's taken on the moulded shape of my air tag because I lose everything in the chaos of my life. But look, it's even wrinkled to try and help it pull it up even further. So the properties of the leather are so important in what we do. And that's why the leather goes through a rigorous testing process from me and my kids and my incredibly busy lifestyle. And so I just, yeah, like plastic has a place.
It does. But more importantly, so does leather in this shape of sustainability. And how long would you expect a piece of leather, like high quality leather to last you? Decades. I have cases from the World Wars, First World War specifically, because a lot of the leather and a lot of the officers' instruments and things were made by, well, they wanted to keep them in like nice. And the things that give up first, it's always the velvet lining on the inside. Right.
And if a leather item is going to rot, it rots at the stitching first. But you can replace the stitching. Yeah, the reason that the leather cases and stuff I have that have lasted as long as they have is because somebody has cared for them. Right. So somebody has, like they have been in a series of caring, loving and caring relationships. Good for the leather. That's it. Well done, chaps. One careful lady owner. Low mileage. We're not flying used cars. Not yet. Depends on how this podcast goes.
Oh. I might get cancelled. So if you put the leather in the ground, especially this pale leather that we have. So this is an unfinished, untreated, pale. I believe the term that people are using at the moment is vachetta. But that's to do with, I believe that's to do with a specific tannery that makes some of them. I call it nude, basically meaning undyed. So the nude refers to the fact that it's naked. Yes. It's an undyed. That's how the cow. Naked leather. That's it. Yes, that's naked leather.
Hey guys. Not as good a marketing term, really. This is my naked leather. That's my naked leather. A different business. Tackle out. So if you put that in the ground, it would mold. It would rot quite quickly, actually. Depending on the environment, how wet the ground was and things. It wouldn't last particularly long. It doesn't have any finishing or top dressing on it.
Some of the handbags and things that you buy in the luxury leather goods market, they do have what's called like their top dressed. So they have, this is the next stage of leather, right? We use the vachetta leather. It means that over extended periods of use, your leather will tell your story, which I love. It means that it will tan with the places that you've held it, the rainstorms that you've been caught in, the drinks spilt, the laughs, the everything.
It's like the story of your life unfolding. It is. I mean, it's the story of your life unfolding, isn't it? You know, the bits that I've been thrown in and out of my pocket. The fact that it, you know, anyway, it's my daughter's swimming card. It's shoved in the back of it so that I know where to find it. It's that whole thing, right?
So the luxury leather goods market, I say luxury in inverted commas because it's actually coming to like head now, exactly how much work isn't going into these handbags and how much work isn't. And even Hermès have started stitching some of their bags on machines now. I did read that somewhere. They've been doing it for a while and you can tell the difference with the codes and stuff that they put on the inside of them.
And it's specific parts of the bags that are hand stitched and specific bits. And even the Birkins and things now as well. But they are mostly hand stitched from what I understand. Although I do have a bit of insider knowledge, but that's not my story to tell. So the leather itself is top dressed. And what top dressing is, they put a finishing coat on the top of it. I believe that's the correct term for it. I know that there'll be some people who are like, oh no, that's not black down.
I'm like, okay, that's fine. I have no idea what it is, so I'll take your word for it. The premise is the same. So the dressing basically, what it does is it protects your leather on the inside. Now this is twofold. It's both a blessing and a curse, right? So the blessing being that for the short term, it protects your item. For the long term, the leather dies behind it. Interesting. Does that make sense? Yeah. So it happens especially in upholstery leather.
So you know when you see the leather car seats and they always rub at the same place, right? Where you get in and out of the car. Usually with like jeans and stuff on and they rub quite quickly. And what happens is, you get a 10 year old car and you put new seats in it. That's fine. Or you put the new covers on it.
But the reason that's happened is because in order to maintain the stain resistance and everything, if you waterproof a surface, especially a natural or organic surface, nothing gets through, right? Right. None of the creamy conditioners get through. None of the leather food gets through. Yep. Like you would have to take those seats off and feed them from the back. So it's impregnated with a waterproof layer. Great. But because of that... Nothing. Nothing gets into it. Nothing gets into it.
The good stuff and the bad stuff. Exactly. So the stains don't get into it. Great. Your bag looks banging. But it doesn't necessarily... Tell the same story. It doesn't necessarily last as long. Interesting. I'm learning so much. So I don't know about you guys, but I'm definitely learning loads. Well, you know, you just... I think this is going to be a really long episode because I have so many questions. I have so many questions. Episode three.
So talk to me about the things you look for when you source the leather you use for bags. People. Okay. I mostly work with people. And obviously I'm drawn to a company because the product, right? I'm drawn to a company because of their product, their materials and things. So the leather company that we've been working with, I've worked with personally for 15 years since I first started doing bridles and everything as well. Oh yeah, we haven't shown those off.
We will show off your bridles in a minute. So I know about, I have known about them. And there are only a handful of people in the UK that you can purchase leather from. And we source all of our leather from UK suppliers. So what that means, and this is full transparency, is that I could quite easily say on the website, Oh, I'm using a UK manufacturer for leather. I don't. I source my leather from people that I trust within the UK.
Okay. So I am still supporting UK industry and UK business, but something happened a long time ago in the UK leather industries and the quality hasn't been as good. Okay. So the leather that we use is Italian. They're set up for it. They have the, you know, the infrastructure and it's also nice to be able to support them too. It's, I mean, you know, yarn is similar. Yeah. A lot of yarn is milled in Italy. They are set up for it. And they still have those industries.
They still have the knowledge. Yeah. And they've got, the thing is as well, like you were setting up a tannery now, not just the space that you'd need to do it, you know, or a mill like Johnny is, you know, not just the space. We couldn't do that here. The phenomenal outlay before you've even started anything. And the issue that I have with it is that I kind of felt that some of the industries and some of the businesses within the UK were more financially focused than product focused.
And I'm very lucky that the person, the people that I still work with are people focused as well. And I feel like a valued customer. Amazing. Which is good. And they know my business and they will phone and say, well, we've got X, Y, and Z. Are you interested? They're like, they know what you like. And if something comes across, because like you said, Hyde's are quite individual. Very individual. And I like using Deadstock whenever I can.
Yeah. So Deadstock, for those of you that don't know, is leather that's been purchased by a larger fashion house. There are, you know, five big fashion houses, predominantly, and the leather is purchased by them. It might be that one's got a couple of, so you can find the Hyde's with like mosquito marks and stuff on them, or fly bites and things. I will see if I can find some later and show you. And there's ones with scars and things on them as well. And they get rid of them.
They don't, like they just bin them. Okay. They're done. And then I get hold of them through my supplier because he's like, oh, well, I know that you use these Hyde's for small straps. Right. So I can cut around them, right? Yeah. Or he knows that with these ones, especially, so we did a whole series with these leather pouches where they had the cattle brands on them. Mine has a very cool mark on it. And they're really, really cool.
And so we did like a whole positive series of like, well, the big brands would have got rid of this, but we're a small brand and we can make this into like the most amazing feature. Yeah. Yeah. And I put like different colours behind some of them. And yeah, so we have the ability, the power and the creativity. We have the creativity to do that. So that's really important. And I get a phone call from them saying they've got, you know, these Hyde's.
They're very similar to the ones we've had in the past. Would we like the Deadstock? Yeah. Great. Thanks. Send us a sample if we can fit it in. And that's how you get the unique products, right? That's how you get the small runs, the one-offs, the, yeah. Well, and it's also how you as a smaller business can sustain yourself and maintain a high quality because the minimum purchase requirement. Oh, it's insane. Like the MOQ for like leather, if you were going to give a spec to a tannery, right?
I've only hit the minimum order quantity once in my business. And that was when we did the spin cycle order. Okay. And we did a big order for the orange custom colour. Right. But I still have that, some of that left. We had to order the amount that we needed. And then you have to order additional hides because you're never going to get that colour again. And it's that like, yeah.
So in the years of doing business and the amount of bags that we personally made, I have only hit that minimum order quantity once. Yeah. Which is huge. Yeah. So it's big. And, you know, we hear it a lot in a variety of ways. People get frustrated that there isn't enough of something and people are like doing a scarcity model on purpose or... It's not on purpose. Why can't you make more? It's not on purpose. If I could live without the stress, personally, I mean, this isn't about you.
This is about me. If I could live without the stress of restocking, if I could hold stock. Yeah. Like I'm not doing it to be awkward. I'm doing it for cash flow. I'm doing it so that everybody gets paid and I'm doing it so that we can keep everything moving. You know, like everything is made by hand and we are only, you know, three people in the workshop. So it's that balance.
And I'd like to state for the record as well, the Spin Cycle, it wasn't just handles that we minimum order quantity with that. We've ordered like all of the leather for the pouches and the bags and stuff that they made too. That's how we managed to do it. But then the process involved in that is that we then had to split down a load of the leather for the pouches, which is a really interesting process. And it requires some very expensive machinery that luckily, one of my friends happens to have.
Otherwise, there would have been some machinery investment. But all of this is, it's manufacturing on a small scale. It is. And I think because we live in a world where we see a lot of things manufactured on giant scales and we have for a really long time and things are instantaneous. It's like Mercedes makes 60 cars a week, don't they? Something like that. Oh, I don't know. We don't make that in bags.
No. That's like, you know, and it is manufacturing on a small scale, but it's manufacturing on a small scale with a level of ingenuity that I didn't know I had until I started doing this. But that's what you need to make a small business work. And you have to call in a lot of favours with leather splitting. Yeah. Gosh, I could talk to you for absolutely ages. Sorry. No, no, no. I just am like, we are going to be here past like the school run if we're not careful.
Do you want to show off a few things? Yes. And do you mind if I ask you, you can definitely choose not to answer this, but can I ask you how much it cost you to start the business at the very beginning? Yes, you can. That's an interesting question in many parts, because when I first started the business, I called in a lot of favours. I worked from home in our spare bedroom until my daughter needed a bedroom of her own. We only have a tiny little cottage.
And then I moved into what was literally a double bedroom, but office space. The biggest investment that I had to find when I first started the business was buying a sewing machine because I didn't have one. So this was six, seven years ago before COVID, before the metal prices and everything went up. And I had to find from nowhere, five and a half grand. That's a big piece of machinery. It's a big piece of machinery. And it's still my favourite piece of machinery. I love her.
We'll take a look at that in a little bit. She's a beaut. But bearing in mind that... But it's not something like the leather you can't put through a home sewing machine. No, absolutely no. Don't do that. No. Well, I mean, you could try, give it a go, see how you get on. It'll be like the tool incident that you talked about in the last part one. If you don't like the sewing machine very much, give it a go.
The issue that you've got when you're sewing leather as well is that anything that you put through the sewing machine, it leaves a mark on it, right? So if you've got a walking foot or if you... We have got walking foots, but they've got a special foot on them. If you've got anything like that and then the leather slips and you can get it through some of the softer leathers, you can definitely get through, but your stitch length will be off.
Even on a Singer sewing machines, the heavy duty ones, they're great for the canvas. But yeah. So yeah, I mean, the biggest investment I made was that. Actually, the biggest investment was believing in myself that I could do it. That was the biggest investment. And at the time, I don't think I've really appreciated exactly what I was doing. I had a new baby. I didn't have a job to go back to. Yeah, your previous employer was a bit of a dick. Yeah, the one before, yeah.
I did some part-time work in between there. She was not a dick. She was wonderful and fabulous. But before that, it was a bit of a, yeah. And this is also... Everything is a learning and a teaching opportunity, right? So it's written into our company policies that family and your care duties and things come first. So if one of us has a problem with the kids, you have the option to work from home. If you can't work from home, we can make up hours. We can switch things around.
We can do whatever to make you feel like you're not panicking about it. Because I don't know how I do it. I don't know how other people do it. I don't know how I would do it with my duty of care responsibilities with the kids. And it's not just kids, right? It's everybody. It's aging parents. It's your dog is sick, you know? Things come up in life, as we all know. And they come up really quickly and at the most inconvenient times, right? Like we were talking about this week.
Both of us have had a car thing where we're like, really? Does that have to be this week? Oh, I know, yeah. Is Mercury in retrograde again? Is that what's going on? Um, all right. I want you to talk about where your leather work came from. I feel like we're jumping around. We're not doing chronological things here at the moment. But you have bridles on the floor. I have bridles on the floor. I am one of those people in life that...
So my kind of philosophy is learn how to do it properly and then hack it. Okay. You know, like don't learn the shortcut. Learn how to do it properly. And then you will have the ability to make it look easy. And to not take the shortcut necessarily, but to make it look... Create efficiencies. Yeah, I reckon. And because I don't do anything by halves, I did a saddlery apprenticeship. And this is just two of them. The other ones are in the attic at home, which I, you know, so these...
I'm sure others are on horses still. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We... All of the Olympic dressage bridles that Izzy... Well, Izzy made them and I did the stitching on them. And they're all still... These are exquisite, by the way. So these are stallion in-hand bridles. These are for showing the boys off to their full advantage. Hey, hey, what, what? I don't know anything about horses or bridles. So this is... I mean, they're missing their bits and everything.
But they're, yeah, they're basically for showing boys how fabulous they are. Just boys? Stallions, yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay, Carmen. So these... This one I made for competition. I'm going to look at this stitching here on the end. So the stitching is all done with a sort of pony in an awl. So you stick it between your legs. Yeah. You hold it with a grip between your legs. And then you put an awl through it. So the holes are pre-marked, but they're not punched. Okay, hang on one second.
I do want to... Because Nhu tells me about this all the time and I don't totally understand it. But she's always talking to me about how leather needs to be stitched this way and not this way. So horizontally across the leather, but like along the grain of it. Is that correct? Yeah, that's right. So there's one exception to that. And that's on decorative pieces like this where you stitch it in a V here. If you stitch straight across it, you create a perforation point on the leather.
And it's one of the biggest bugbears that I have with belts. Go check out your commercial leather bags and you'll see what she's talking about. Oh, yeah. Commercial leather bags and belts. It's one of the biggest bugbears. They go straight across it. It creates a perforation point. And then nine times out of ten, that'll be the bit that just creamed straight off. So sorry, you're back to your awl and the thing between your legs. The clams. Yeah. So you stick it between your legs.
You have it up like this. You sit like this and you stitch like this. And to the point where I have calluses on my hands and everything. And that's responsible for the nice muscular structure I have now. It's very ladylike. So you do it all by hand and you just keep going and going and going until you finished it. These are so pretty, by the way. They're good, huh? I'm really proud of this noseband because you see it's stitched on a curve. Yes. So you put this in a leather rounding block.
You wet it in warm water. Mark it out, finish it, wet it in warm water, put it in a rounding block and then rub it so it creates the dome. And then you leave the dome to dry. And then you make all of your backing pieces that are the same. But you do it by skiving the edges of the leather. Okay. So that you have a dome-shaped piece to go on the back of it. And then you have to stitch straight through it even though your awl wants to go in on a curve and angle. And I did all right, I think.
I mean, they're beautifully stitched. They're beautiful pieces. How old are these? These are eight, nine years old. They've never been fed. I should probably do that. It still looks really good. Also, can you show my microphone? It is. It's a creak. It's just, I love the creak. Mm-hmm. Yep. So there you go, you see. So this is where New started. Proud of that. And this is where she's at now. Mm-hmm. Get that bag out of there. Uh, we have these in the shop, the gray version.
But this is the leather basket that is, let's see, it's kind of here. So these ones are, they are machine stitched. Okay. But they are hand finished. Okay. So this is the trade-off right between what's available and what's viable. Right. So I could stitch, I could hand stitch all of these. And they would be close to 2,000 pounds. Okay. So instead what we've done is we employ all of the hand finishing techniques. Right. So we edge shave everything. We crease everything.
So this lovely line across the top, we crease it into place. And all of the processes to get to this point, so that you have that nicely finished, beautifully crafted product. But we took the hand stitching out of it to reduce the price point. Okay. Amazing. Like tenfold, basically. Like 1,500 quid, yeah. Yeah. Because it's the hours and the time. And then it would be me teaching somebody else how to do it. Yeah. And it would be the success rate of being able to do it. Does that make sense?
That's really nice. Oh yeah, those ones are really lovely. Um, one of the other things... That's one of the products I'm most proud of. It is absolutely beautiful. We have a couple of them in the shop. I also would just like to show off how clever you are. So this is one of the pencil cases. Or I call it a pencil case, but it could be other things. It's the envelope shape one. And there's actually not a stitch in this. No. Yeah, there's no stitching. They are hand finished and riveted.
They use solid brass fittings to keep the leather in place. So you've just created a shape that requires two fastenings, basically. And the beauty of it being that when I created it, I was like... Obviously, it's not like a completely new concept. There are people that do this. Yeah. But I added gussets to it so that you could add like depth to it. And I changed the way that it's sat so that... So you'll notice on them that the top of it comes out slightly to cover everything.
And we can also show off... This is the nude leather, yes? Yes, that's the nude leather. The naked leather. This is a brand new one. And then this is one that Mila's used. The one my kids have used as well. I like to try and punish them as... Not the kids. Yeah, but you see the patina and the life on it. Yeah, so it's all about the story. Yeah. It's all about the story. And that's the product that I use every day. I think there's a misconception that your product will age really quickly as well.
That's six, seven months use. And I took that to Puerto Rico with us. So that's, you know, seven, eight months. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it still creaks. We love the creaking. And the thing about all of our products is their TARDIS-like capacity. They are like... There's so much stuff that you can fit into these. I think you've seen me do one of my like kind of famous... Oh, when we did that one at Unravel, you just kept pulling stuff out. I was like, this is amazing.
I like to max out the capacity of my bag. We do want to show this off. This I haven't seen. This is brand new. Talk to me about this. This is a substantial one. So we used to do leather O3s. Yes. And it was a customer request and I really like them. And we found some really nice leather that we're working with at the moment. And we've started making them in colors, O3s in colors. And this is a very soft, supple. Because we've got a core range of canvas that we work with.
We've just started working with a new canvas supplier. So it's all GOTS. Is that right? Organic certified. So it's all GOTS certified, which is huge for us. And as a result of that, the minimum order quantity of the canvas has gone up exponentially. So we're finding other ways to introduce color or different colors. And the leather... This is a beautiful like light tealy. Well, we're going back to our roots with the leather, really. And small batch production.
Yeah. So it's the small amount of leather that we can get hold of that we are using. Obviously, we maximize the amount that we can. So we'll offer it in this one. And then there's two other colors as well that are coming. Maybe I get a sneak peek later. I take it this is machine stitched as well. This is a machine stitched product. Because otherwise this would be like 10,000. Yeah. It's a machine... It's a machine stitched product. But again, hand finished and everything too.
And it's got the same sort of... It's the same quality that you'd come to expect from us. Okay. Amazing. And we will do smaller items in this too. So we've got the little envelope purses and we've got the O3 pocket pouches as well. Oh, lovely O3 pocket pouch. Which again is like the most underrated product. Yes. It looks like nothing. I think that and also this is not leather or canvas. But the tie top bag, super underrated.
I was also someone who was like, I don't really get why you're making those. I don't understand that. I was like, I'll try one because I'm your friend. And I believe you and trust you. And now I'm like, I'm an idiot. You're like, I'm humoring you. Yeah, actually. And I'm like, she was so right. This thing is so practical. And so useful and so beautiful and fun. But they're so good for everything, right? You can get berry picking or you can use it to separate your smalls in your luggage.
That is actually exactly what I do. One of mine I use for my camera equipment for podcasting. I've used it to separate my snacks in my number 10 when I'm traveling. Yeah, you put all of the dog stuff in it. So like treats, poo bags in it. Like you've got easy access to it. I break up the different kids snacks. So they've got one each. Like there's no arguments, you know, the whole thing.
And the best thing I found it for is when you're traveling and you have dirty clothes, you put it in the bag, tie it up. And then the whole thing just goes in the washing machine. Oh, there you go. So my lesson learned is just trust New's product development skills. And don't question them. Just hope that she comes about the product development a lot quicker. Backpack. Backpack. Hot girls on her tote. Anyways, that's fine.
Thank you so much for joining us for part two of this episode with New from Heidenhammer. I think I've learned a ton. It's been absolutely amazing. I hope you really enjoyed learning more about her business, about leather, about what it means to be a small manufacturer and what it means to be supporting a business. Yeah, thank you very much. Heidenhammer because... We can't do it without you guys. Yeah, none of us can do this without you, our customers.
And it's really important to keep businesses like this alive. So thank you. Thank you so much. Please do like and subscribe the episode wherever you are watching or listening. And feel free to share us with a friend who might be interested. Thanks so much.