Hi there!  I'm Sarah.  We're based in Hastings in the south east of England.  We strive to produce 100% hand made quality English fleece products and ship them worldwide.

Ethical Employment

I have a passion for providing ethical employment, particularly for those wanting to get back into work after having had children or who might otherwise find regular employment difficult for whatever reason. We have people who work from home making their own hours according to how much they can take on.  This means that we can work around our other commitments without being tied to strict working hours.  The idea is to empower people to be able to earn their own income without the constraints of child care, school holidays, disability, prejudice etc. So when buying from us you can rest assured that you are helping provide good ethical employment and getting a great, green product.

Sarah's Sewing Group

We've recently started up a Sewing Group in the Downs Farm Community Centre.  It's for people of all abilities, especially those who can't yet sew! It's every Wednesday morning (all through the holidays) from 10-12.  The idea is that those who can't sew at all learn how to do things like sew a button on or fix a hem and those who can already sew can potentially be trained up to join our Sewing Team - a win win situation :)

Lowering our carbon footprint

We also like to make our products as eco-friendly as possible which is why we use fleece as it's partially made out of recycled water bottles!  How cool is that? We also use address labels that are donated by a local factory, they're end of line unprinted labels that would otherwise be recycled.  Our postage and packaging bags are made out of recycled plastic.  We are always looking for more ways to reduce, re-use and recycle without compromising on quality.

Our history so far...

It began in November 2008 with a top that I made to go underneath normal clothes to keep me warm when working from home.  This worked so well that I was able to keep our heating at 16 degrees, save money and still be perfectly warm, even when it was snowing!  Having seen me make mine my children then wanted their own.  They wore these to school and found that they only needed to wear a tshirt in the classroom - much to the teachers amazement! About a week later I started getting mums come up to me on the school gate asking if they could have one.  I soon realised that this was a great opportunity and so the Thermal Top was born.  Soon I began making pretty much anything anyone asked for out of fleece.   I researched it and found that it's partially made from recycled water bottles so I stuck with just fleece for this reason even though it's tempting to branch out into other materials that could widen our range.

Our future...

Do you ever allow yourself to dream about where your business may be one day?

The other day I was with a friend and we got talking about what our dreams for our businesses are, you know the “if money were no object” type of dreams?  Having spent five minutes in wonderland I decided that now was a good time to start noting these down.  So here we go.

“In my ideal world I would like to see my company:-

• have premises to work from local to my house as it’s on the doorstep of lots of local people without jobs;

• become so big that it makes a difference to the economy of my town, Hastings, East Sussex;

• be this big and still be ethical, green with a low carbon footprint;

• be this big and still be about the little people not the fat cats;

• train men and women who have few if any qualifications how to sew and become qualified in sewing;

• give my employees a chance to get more qualifications such as their maths and english GCSEs;

• give my employees a hope for the future and a better chance in life both for themselves and for their children;

• give opportunities to people like single mums who can only work so many hours per week or earn so much per week before it effects their benefits with a long term view of enabling them to get out the of benefit trap;

• give flexible working hours to allow more people to be able to work;

• provide employment to those members of our society that might otherwise be over looked, like the older generation and the disabled;

• produce thousands of ‘green‘ products;

• help loads of people save money on their heating bills with our warm clothes like the Thermal Tops;

• help bring manufacturing back to England;

• provide an environment where those who thrive on deadlines can do so and those that don’t can be protected from that which holds them back.

This may seem rather fanciful and unobtainable but unless you’ve got a goal you’re never going to know if you’ve hit it, as my Dad said to me a long time ago.

Also these ethics are just a part of me, it’s the way I live my life already.  Our company is already doing most of these things (except the premises and qualifications bit) but on a small scale.

So if you’re reading this and am loving my list like I do you can help by:-

• promoting us, I can post you fliers or business cards or you can email me with your own idea;
• buying our products;
• emailing me shops you know of and their website address that might be interested in stocking our products;
• passing this post on to people you know who might be interested in our products or who might be able to help this become a reality;
• or if you’re feeling flush and are looking for an investment opportunity feel free to Contact me!

I love dreaming but I love the action plans that come out of them even more!