HRH The Princess Royal’s recent visit to Dents glove factory (“the first new glove factory in Great Britain for 150 years”) was featured on both BBC and ITV – just click on the links to view.

 

And, there are some great pictures of the visit on Warminster Web.

 

The media was out in force for HRH the Princess Royal’s visit to Dents.

 

They were attracted not only by the royal visit, but also by Dents’ continued success during very difficult times for British manufacturing. With BBC TV, ITV, BBC Radio and local radio in attendance, along with several photographers and reporters from various print and online media, journalists were everywhere.  Ms Deborah Moore and Dents Marketing Consultant Mr John Roberts headed a long list of Dents personnel who were interviewed for television and radio.  Tony Foreman, who has been with Dents for 47 years, was interviewed about sales and the new distribution facilities, John Cundick, who started with Dents in 1949, spoke about the remarkable changes that have taken place over the years;  Sally Norris and Lily Munday, who have both been with Dents for well over 40 years, demonstrated their hand sewing techniques to fascinated camera crews;  and even our honoured overseas agents and visitors were pulled in, with Mr Nagabuchi from Japan managing an excellent interview despite limited English.

 

The effort and co-operation by everyone at Dents on the day ensured the visit by HRH the Princess Royal went without a hitch, and the celebrations at a dance for the staff that evening were well deserved. The visit had been a resounding success!

Last Friday was a wonderful day for Dents!  HRH The Princess Royal honoured the company by visiting our brand new £4 million factory complex in Warminster, Wiltshire, and officially opening the new head offices with the unveiling of a plaque.

 

After days of rain and biting winds, the skies cleared and at 9.50am sharp the Royal helicopter soared over the building. Minutes later HRH The Princess Royal arrived at Dents and the visit had begun!

 

Our Creative Director Deborah Moore hosted the visit, and after early introductions, she accompanied the Princess Royal to various departments within the company, including the factory, the design department and our fascinating museum.

The Princess Royal stopped to talk to many members of staff, and was particularly interested in meeting the leather selectors and hand sewers in the factory, and learning about Dents 2012 Collections from the design team. She chatted to many of Dents’ longest serving employees, and met a number of guests, including Dents overseas agents Mr Nagabuchi from Japan, Mr Kenny Kang from Korea and Ms Carole De Schepper from Belgium.

The museum was of particular interest to The Princess Royal, especially the photograph of the visit of His Royal Highness, The Prince of Wales, to Dents in 1923, the Coronation Glove made for Queen Elizabeth II, and also the gloves worn by Queen Elizabeth I and Lord Nelson.

 

Her Royal Highness was presented with a donation to the Princess Anne’s Charities Trust, and a pair of Dents leather gloves.

 

All in all it was a wonderfully happy day, and it was all over far too quickly.

wool lined two – tone peccary glove

by John Roberts

Dents is one of only a few glove manufacturers who are still able to create gloves using real peccary leather (a peccary is a mammal from South America that resembles a pig). The reason is that only a master cutter with unique skills and much experience can cut this wonderful leather. It also requires a hand machinist with dexterity and many years experience to sew it. Possibly, this is why peccary leather gloves are increasingly found in fewer and fewer of the world’s finest stores.

Peccary leather is unique in its strength and character. In time the leather will assume a golden bloom, and acquire its own distinctly unique colour.

Beware, there are many imitation peccaries around, but the soft, almost buttery feel of the real thing is impossible to duplicate!

Handsewn cashmere lined gloves in hairsheep leather

By John Roberts

1. Our leather buyer has almost 50 years experience in selecting only the softest and finest quality leathers for Dents hand made gloves.

2.  For over 230 years Dents has been designing and manufacturing leather gloves in England, for the world’s finest shops and department stores. The first pair was cut by Master Cutter, John Dent,  in the year 1777, in the city of Worcester. For the past 50 years, Dents gloves have been crafted in the old market town of Warminster, in the quintessential English county of Wiltshire.

3. Today, as in the past, Dents gloves are made using traditional methods handed down over the centuries. Little has changed from 1777 in the way we make gloves, apart from the introduction of electricity.

4.  Each pair is still bench cut, one at a time, relying on the skill and experience of the master cutter to shape the well fitting glove.

5.  Dents gloves are made with a completely separate glove lining to the outer leather shell, and the lining is then fitted into the glove, ensuring a much better fitting glove – this method of manufacture is called “glove in glove”, and is an added cost, but an essential part of the traditional glove maker’s craft.

6. There are 42  components to cut, assemble and sew together, to create one pair of Dents gloves.

7. In the manufacture of one pair of gloves, there are 32 separate operations to be performed by highly skilled craft people.

8. It takes time to make fine leather gloves – approximately 7 hours to cut and sew just one pair.

9. It takes up to six years to fully train a glove cutter, and four years to fully train a skilled glove sewer.

10. Today, when we use machinery, we use the same type of Singer sewing machines we have been using for over a hundred years, except that now they are driven by electricity, rather than by a foot pedal. The machines we use are no longer manufactured, and the skill of our mechanics is constantly tested in repairing and lengthening their useful life.

By Sally Smith

The end of an era. That was how I felt, and that was how some of the journalists described it, as the first excavators started work earlier today demolishing our iconic 1930s style head office and factory in Warminster.

Certainly, it was an emotional day for many Dents staff, especially the longer serving employees, who have been with the company for well over 40 years.

(left to right at front) Tony Foreman, Deborah Moore and John Cundick with demo team

The jaws of the excavator loom as John sheds a tear. Also in the picture, Deborah, Tony, and Jeremy Evans

John Cundick especially was attracting a lot of attention because he has worked at Dents continuously, apart from a short break for military service, since 1949.

He joined a few of us on site this morning to wave goodbye to the building he has known since he was a young teenager.

“I started immediately on leaving school at Dents, and my goodness, it was a different place then,” John told me. “We still made beautiful gloves, but there were no computers, few typewriters. Most work was done by hand – both the sewing and also the record keeping,” he said.

“Considering we were even in those days a global company exporting around the world, you can imagine the paperwork involved.”

John also has memories of a big well near the entrance, of real fires (for heating!) throughout the building, and of regular Saturday morning working with just two weeks holiday a year. Makes you wonder about the term “good old days”!

But times move on, and now the old premises are being demolished and developed by Henry Boot of Bristol to include a 23,000 sq ft Waitrose foodstore.

We at Dents are already happily ensconced in a superb new purpose built 45,000 sq ft head office, factory and warehouse just the other side of town, with a brilliant new factory shop on site.

Deborah Moore, one of our directors, said that while it was sad to see the old building disappear, it was nevertheless a celebration marking a new way forward into an exciting future.

“This year our sales have gone up steadily; our collections of handbags, hats and scarves as well as gloves for men and women are being sold in major department stores and fashion outlets across the world,” she said. “Two hundred years ago, when Dents was a fledgling glove maker, few could have dreamed of the premises that are now being demolished; and what they would have thought of our new headoffice and factory, with its electronic equipment and high tech facilities, I can’t imagine!”

Once the first excavator set to work, it was time to leave. The noise and the dust will continue for a while, but it seems it will all be gone in just two weeks. After that, it will be just photographs and our memories – and of course time to start forward on another exciting step in the Dents story.

John has been with Dents since 1949, no wonder the media flocked to him to hear all those memories of yesteryear. Here he is being interviewed by the BBC.

Some mixed feelings, maybe, as we see the bulldozers arrive at our old building in Fairfield Road – as the BBC has reported, demolition day is finally here.  Sally’s personal report, marking this important day in Dents’ history, with pictures and interviews, will follow…

In the meantime – it’s back to business, with Dents exhibiting at Moda at the NEC in Birmingham from August 14 to 16. You can see our spring / summer 2012 men’s collection on stand MA30, and women’s collection on M11

Finally, a note for those of you who can’t wait to fill your shopping trolleys – I hear Waitrose won’t be up and running until the New Year after all…

Simon Crompton, (from the ever popular Permanent Style),  spotted some interesting gloves on his recent visit to our factory. You can find out more, and read about Nelson’s bloodstained gloves, here.

BBC Wiltshire presenters Matthew Smith and Mark O’Donnell did a comprehensive feature on Dents when we moved premises at the beginning of the month, so we thought we’d share some of it with you: 1. Annie Weston of BBC Wiltshire talks to Robert Yentob, Dents’ chairman, about the secrets of the company’s success, and the reasons for the move. 2. Despite local job losses and recessionary times, Dents is moving into bigger premises after sixty years at its present location. Deborah Moore, Dents’ Creative Director, speaks about the move, and Annie Weston interviews Sally Norris, who has been making Dents gloves for forty years. 3. Tony Nicklin, chairman of the Warminster Town Plan Working Group, explains how Dents’ move came about, and the positive impact it will have on Warminster and the local economy, including the long awaited arrival of the Waitrose supermarket, scheduled for completion by December. 4. Annie Weston speaks to Deborah Moore about Dents gloves, and we hear more from Sally Norris, including answers to questions you’ve probably wondered about yourself, such as, “don’t you get nervous making gloves for Prince Charles?”, and “when you’re out, can you always recognize a pair of Dents gloves?”