What manufacturing needs is trade directories backed by government data.

What manufacturing needs is trade directories backed by government data.

Every sector of the economy could probably do with this. If you've ever thought of getting something printed, you will have realised the variety of printing techniques alongside binding and different minimum orders, you will probably have found incomplete trade directories and done a bit of googling. The same is true of services as well, if you want to find the right lawyer or plumber. With manufacturing, there are extra problems and it doesn't matter why, although I think I can describe, it just matters that it's true. I know it's true from trying to sell vegan footwear, mainly in the 2000s 2010s, and trying to find suppliers. A frustration is that if you do strike gold; if you discover your perfect supplier, ig quite likely closes because not enough other people have discovered it!

A year or so ago I wrote something for a government consulation and put the text here because slightly public, which makes it more interesting to edit just in case someone reads! It is also harder to loose than files on my hard disc. I will try to edit a little this June '26 

This is what I wrote.

I propose greater access to raw data on

• employment types,

• industrial classifications (from VAT and income tax records), and

• export data by product classification and manufacturing origin.

Companies House already provides business classification data, which could be refined and supplemented with additional data sources. The goal is to enable the creation of comprehensive UK trade directories, similar to historical resources like The Shoe Trades Directory to identify which firms manufacture specific products in the UK—from footwear and clothing to solar panels.

It looks as though a government consultation suggested this format.

 1. Who looses?
 1. Who gains?
 3. Why government? How much do Google, AI, or private sector directories like Kompass or Checkatrade do the job already? Why don't suppliers all just get good web sites or join a trade association?

 1. Who looses?

• Businesses loose privacy, and might not want orders
  Some sole traders may prefer confidentiality, but might forget to tick a box on their tax form to request this. They might prefer an anonimous kind of contact form instead of a name and address for contact. 
  
  
• Taxpayers loose other services (unless this brings in more tax, which is a bet)
  I think trade directories are a safe bet for raising tax revenue and growing the economy.
  But there is a cost to releasing data - mainly in deciding how.
  
  
• Legal & policy change: Currently, FOI requests for HMRC data are rejected under the Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Act 2005. However, the Act does allow exceptions where "specified in regulations made by the Treasury" or where "the Commissioners are satisfied that it is in the public interest" (Section 20, UK Legislation). So, ministers and senior people in the treasury have to write regulations or persuade “commissioners”.
  
  
• Bombing targets in a war: The BAE shell manufacturing plant is already capable of being put underground in Wales, I think.

 2. Who gains?

Trade directories benefit...

• Buyers & sellers: Businesses searching for niche products (e.g., wiring looms, speaker cones, footwear components) would have a reliable resource. A past example includes a car manufacturer requesting tariff exemptions due to difficulty sourcing specific UK-made components. Also, when a factory isn't visible, it might not be viable. You can find your speaker cone factory or shoe factory, and then it closes because not enough other people are interested.

• Jobseekers: Easier access to local employers and industry information. Business owners might spot gaps in the market more clearly as well.
  The UK produced non-woven materials for things like weed control fabric, but there was nowhere for buyers to look to find cotton alternatives; there were schemes to try to out- bid other countries and get gowns from China.
  . 
• Economic planners & policymakers: 
  Economists spot inflationary pressures from something like an oil price rise, have a think, and suggest putting the interest rate up. This closes factories. Really, that's how the system works!
  They do talk a little about "the supply side", but tend just to think about wages and a vague "productivity" idea; they don't have information about how to install more solar panels and wind farms to counter-act the oil price rise. I think that if more information were available, at least an economist could point towards an area and say "that's the area of expertise that might help reduce inflation".
  
  
• The UK produced medical ventilators for very ill people during the COVID crisis with the designs already worked-out and ready to make in bigger quantities, but I remember that this information emerged slowly.National security & trade policy: The UK needs resilient supply chains. If the USA restricts weapons exports or trade tensions with China escalate, policymakers must quickly identify local alternatives.
  
  
• MPs and regional development agencies
  ...need to know what is already being made in their areas in order to help if they can or just to consult.
  
  
• Apprenticeship providers
  The Mayor of Manchester boasted that he had got training and demand to match-up better in Manchester so that people could train to do real jobs installing solar panels (if I remember right).
  
  
• Journalists and bloggers 
  This is a few points in one.
  Journalists report on "a previously unknown private mine" if there is an accident or "possibly the last piano manufacturer" when Yamaha ceased production. A story about one of the last two scissor manufacturers caught-on and kept production viable. With this rather puzzled kind of coverage, it is hard er for buyers to enjoy feeling part of the story.
  
  This happened to me last year. I was buying a car battery on ebay, like you do, and found that Lucas batteries are made in Sri Lanca;. UK ones are made by Yuasa in Ebbow Vale. There was even a £2.5 million grant from the Welsh government, and it could hae got a better return on investment if sypathetic buyers had recnised the brand and thought "that's nice", and felt good, rather than scrolling-on down the list. So I am mixing-up buyer sympathy with journalist and blogger exposure and could probably tease the points out more clearly but hope you get the idea
  
  
• Startups & innovators: Smaller firms, particularly those competing against low-cost imports, lack the magin and scale for an advertising budget. As the founder of The Kinky Boot Factory noted in a documentary, imported shoes enter the UK at £15, while the rest of the wholesale cost is advertising. UK manufacturers cannot afford such advertising, and a trade directory would level the playing field.
  
  
• Larger importers who need top-ups trials and remedials done closer to their customers
  Surface mail from Asia can take 2-3 and the cheap suppliers like large orders. For clothing, without UK factories, this can lead to -
  ◦ Rushed Asian orders which can lead to worse working conditions in Asian factories.
  ◦ Expensive & high-emission air freight. This point made  by Addidas who tried publishing their low transport emmisions data for a few years. They gave up. Each year there were a few rushed orders that stopped the data liiking so good.
  ◦ Clearance pricing on the ranges that are missing some sizes.
  Each of these problems can be solved, ideally, with a UK factory willing to do smaller quicker orders while the container loads or the cartons come from Asia.

3. Why government?
How much do Google, AI, or private sector directories like Kompass or Checkatrade do the job already?

The problem is manufactuers, not service providers.

• Historical context:
  A Shoe Trades Directory from 1998 listed nearly every footwear and footwear component manufacturer in the UK, including batch sizes, pricing tiers, and production methods. This allowed buyers to contact the right suppliers with the right questions and most likely get a reply. It was sponsored by a shoe trade magazine where the advertising sales staff had ato make the list anyway. The internet now provides some of this information for free and footwear trade magazines are long-gone in the UK, but the subtle detail of who makes exactly what in what minimum orders and whether they are mass-market, “top end” or in the middle are hard to find.
  
  
• Broad hostoricla context: north v south.
  Everybody knows that industrial areas have suffered after loss of trade to low-wage countries.
  In 1979 a new economic policy managed to control inflation by raising interest rates. Almost by mistake, the transmission mechanism of monetary policy raises exchange rates at the same time and my estimate is that a fifth of manufacturing was lost in five years. Another interest rate spike followed in the mid 80s. (The same exchange rate fluctuations also effect cheap tourism, where the choice between Blackpool and Alicante can depend on the exchange rate.)
  
  The positive way of putting this is that maybe more manufacturing went to cheaper countries than need have done; there could be a chance to get some back if consumers felt good about buying British and buyers were able to find British factories.
  
  
• Manufacturing is rare and subdivided into more specialities than the people on Checkatrade who can probably concentrate on a few postcodes and do more than one kind of job. Manufacturing depends on a set of machines and the product the machines usually make. I suppose that's why it's rarer to find a manufacturer diretory than a service directory.
  
  
• Competition from cheap countries that lack a welfare state. You might expect the UK’s only manufacturer of some particular niche product to be good at sifting emails for customer enquiries. The reality for clothing manufacturers, according to the Make it British web site, is that they are more like some of the plumbers and plasterers on Checkatrade, working without a receptionist or a sales rep and just scanning the emails on a smartphone in-between a load of other jobs. They tend not to list their capabilities online, leading to many ignored inquiries from businesses unaware of minimum order requirements or production methods. 

Trade directories can help, as they have in the past

I propose the creation of an online database of UK manufacturers, based on HMRC records. Businesses could be listed as either:

• “Willing to receive inquiries”, or
• “Opted out of direct contact” 
• " .... " - individuals might want to be ex-directory.

The database should be indexed by:

• Manufacturing classification (from VAT/income tax records). Income tax is important as I don't think ministries have information about sole trader businesses that aren't registered for VAT.. We saw this in the way Brexit was negotiated: it's often uneconomic to sort the VAT on a small export to Europe, even if the courier does it. Importing, it's easy to end up ppaying VAT twice.
  
  
• Export/import declarations.
  
  
• Workforce size categories (e.g., "1-10 employees").
  
  
• Companies House classification (improved by prompts on Companies House forms to clarify what "manufacturer" means such as "manufactuer with own workshops in the UK".
  
  
• Optional business self-submissions, including website links, production details, and minimum order requirements.

Such a publicly accessible resource would encourage the private sector to develop value-added directories, including Kompass that already exists, while improving domestic trade efficiency. It's something people expect to find already.

Conclusion

A UK-wide manufacturing database would enhance transparency, strengthen local supply chains, and reduce unnecessary imports, benefiting businesses, workers, and policymakers alike. The key is to ensure privacy safeguards, minimal taxpayer burden, and a user-friendly format to encourage adoption. Would be happy to discuss further.

the value of fashion

London Fashion week justifies its funding with a document called "The Value of Fashion", written for them by Oxford Economics. Flicking through the pdf pages, it becomes obvious that they're about the value of clothes shops like the ones that sponsored the document. A bit like writing a report called "The Value of Banks". Another odd thing about the document is that it got some public sponsorship from UK Trade and Investment, who pay for some visitors to go to London Fashion Week, and the bit of the Greater London Authority that was then London Development Agency. I don't think taxpayers got good value from the report. For example you can't claim that Sports Direct is part of some specially useful or beneficial industry that deserves government encouragement and subsidised trade shows.

Meanwhile, if clothes shops really do contribute a lot to the economy, some of them find ways of not paying tax. Monsoon Accessorize PLC have called for clothes shops not to be taxed if they use the word "ethical" occasionally (this is from a firm that pays its UK suppliers late and breaks minimum wage law in both India and the UK) and Arcadia Group pays its tax in the boss's wife's name, at the Monaco income tax rate of zero.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140414223637/http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/targets/3 has some background:

The Value of Fashion: Sir Philip Green

Philip Green is a multi-billionaire businessman, who runs some of the biggest names on British high streets. His retail empire includes brands such as Topshop, Topman, Dorothy Perkins, Burton, Miss Selfridge and British Home Stores.

Philip Green is not a non-dom. He lives in the UK. He works in the UK. He pays tax on his salary in the UK. All seems to be in order. Until you realise that Philip Green does not actually own any of the Arcadia group that he spends every day running. Instead, it is in the name of his wife who has not done a single day’s work for the company. Mrs Green lives in Monaco, where she pays not a penny of income tax.

In 2005 Philip Green awarded himself £1.2bn, the biggest paycheck in British corporate history. But this dividend payout was channeled through a network of offshore accounts, via tax havens in Jersey and eventually to Green’s wife’s Monaco bank account. The dodge saved Green, and cost the tax payer, close to £300m. This tax arrangement remains in place. Any time it takes his fancy, Green can pay himself huge sums of money without having to pay any tax.

Before the election, the Lib Dems liked to talk tough on tax avoiders. But as soon as they entered the coalition, this pre-election bluster became just another inconvenient promise they quietly forgot. In August David Cameron appointed the country’s most notorious serial-tax avoider to advise the government on how best to slash public spending. Not a single Lib Dem minister uttered a word of complaint. A Guardian editorial denounced this as “shameful”.

Philip Green’s £285m tax dodge could pay for:

• The full, hiked up £9,000 fees for almost 32,000 students
• Pay the salaries of 20,000 NHS nurses

And if that’s not reason enough to take action against Sir Philip, it is worth noting that he has built his £5bn fortune on the back of sweatshop labour, using Mauritius sweatshops where Sri Lankans, Indians and Bangladeshis toil 12 hours a day, six days a week, for minimal pay.

Arcadia Group isn't singled-out for being a bad company like its rival, Sports Direct, but the practice of using minimum wage zero hours contracts is common in retail.


More than 1 million British workers could be employed on zero-hours contracts, new figures released on Monday reveal, suggesting that British business is deploying the controversial employment terms far more widely than previously thought.

The Value of Fashion: Sports Direct

Sports direct admit that 90% of UK staff are on zero hours contracts.

Three staff at the department for business are trying to think of an answer according to the minister. Oh and Sports Direct make no statement about the conditions in their Vietnamese factory suppliers. Oh and no badness is meant towards the lawyer who got IP work for sports direct and volunteered for a few board meetings at Ethical Fashion Forum after offering free IP surgeries to UK business at a neighbouring project called own-it.

The Guardian have a page about Sports Direct
One of the articles lists accusations, but leaves one out: the company is less hypocritical than others. It offers fake markdowns and says that's legal. It pays less than the minimum wage and maybe that's not quite legal but it has a defence in saying that some hours are spent waiting to be haranged and searched. It has a staff handbook which states you can be sacked for more or less anything, and, if no reason can be thought of, most of the staff are from two rival temp agencies anyway so a word can be had with the agency. This again might not be quite legal but is common enough. Most of us have had jobs a bit like this, but Sports Direct forces politicians to think about it, rather than hiding the facts in detail and denying them as adult social care providers do for your granny's weekly visit from a care assistant.

Here is the quote:

Ashley’s Sports Direct chain has made him the 22nd richest man in Britain, estimated by the Sunday Times Rich List to be worth £3.5bn. Temporary workers at his warehouse, by contrast, get paid hourly rates that work out below the minimum wage and suffer the kind of indignities – including rigorous harangues over the public address system to work faster – that come straight from a dystopian novel. Ashley, as well as being very rich, is also the unpopular owner of Newcastle United. The items he sells are made cheaply in east Asia. His warehouse depends on cheap eastern European labour. Few individuals so neatly encapsulate the fortunes, in both senses, of modern Britain.

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To do list and note to self: try to catch-up with this stuff. Those who read more newspapers and belong to trade associations probably find them a year earlier, but hey.

http://www.policyconnect.org.uk/apmg/events/launch-alliance-report-repatriating-uk-textiles-manufacture

The Alliance Report - repatriating UK textiles manufacture

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http://www.policyconnect.org.uk/apmg/home

All Party Manufacturing Group

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High End Designer Manufacturing

A report on Protecting Existing Resource and Encouraging Growth and Innovation

Report commissioned by the British Fashion Council, UK Fashion & Textile Association, Creative Skillset and Marks & Spencer Research by Oxford Economics and Glasgow Caledonian University

Steering Group
Introduction by Caroline Rush p4
Executive Summary p7
Key Findings p8
part 1
Introduction p10
CASE STUDY 1: Mulberry p14
part 2
Background Context p16
CASE STUDY 2: John Smedley p28
part 3
Survey Results p30
CASE STUDY 3: Sourgrape p34
part 4
Modelling Results p36
CASE STUDY 4: Private White V.C. p40
part 5
Conclusions, Challenges & Recommendations p42
part 6
Methodological Appendix p46
part 7
Acknowledgements p50

Update: last year the British Fashion Council commissioned a new report, with the usual bias towards people who talk about fashion, and high fashion, but with two sets of economists instead of one and some attempt to contact real manufacturers among the list. One of the sets of economists work at a college that runs London fashion courses, rather than factory training, but at least the use of two should encourage them to spot each others' special effects. There are even a couple of shoe factory people interviewed on the list from - Norman Walsh and Grenson.
Note to selt: read the report, which is called High End Designer Manufacturing
http://britishfashioncouncil.com/uploads/files/1/BFC%20Initiatives/manufacturing%20report.pdf

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Planb4fashion is a blog by Veganline.com which is a vegan shoe shop

We pay several times for each badly-run country

We pay several times for each badly-run country.

We benefit once, or I do, because I'm wearing Primark's cheapest jeans.

♦ We pay in having fewer jobs, because there's less rag trade here.

♦ We pay in having fewer taxes for the same reason.

♦ We pay because our politicians send our army to those poor and unstable parts of the world that have no secondary education or welfare state.

♦ We pay in having unstable desperate parts of the world that refugees and economic migrants leave, overcrowding parts of the UK.

♦ We probably pay in the spread of disease - thinking more about African governments which choose not to set-up a health service.

♦ We pay 0.7% of our GDP, out of our taxes, towards the social services bills of badly-run countries like Bangladesh. Pakistani taxpayers pay less than that for their own few state hospitals, and many Pakistani MPs do not even bother to pay Pakistani tax. It's probably the same in Bangladesh or India.

So we have all paid six times for my pair of trousers and politicians' failure to write a proper tariff against goods from badly-run countries. That's before any ultuism towards people in Bangladesh. My jeans are beginning to feel a bit special now!

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Planb4fashion is a blog by Veganline.com which is a vegan shoe shop

plan B 4 fashion manifesto

4-point manifesto from the blog at https://facebook.com/planB4fashion .
Points 1 & 2 are about fashion production in the UK.
Points 3 & 4 are about reducing poverty in the far east - for example Bangladesh.

1.
UK government can help UK factories compete, by releasing tax data to say what factories exist.

Data could be made-up into trade directory by anyone who wanted to do the work as happens already with simlar data. Some companies would find ways of covering their costs and cross-selling other services. If not, perhaps a small grant of a volunteer effort could get good directories written.

Better trade directories are a very cheap way of re-balancing the UK economy so that it begins to pay enough taxes and employ enough people. Factories help money circulate around the UK, bringing taxes back into government, and creating jobs in run-down areas. Factories also have to be very lean to pay the costs of paying for a democratic welfare state with a UK living-standard and rents. They don't all have staff for sales or PR or tendering for contracts or submitting entries to competitions. Some don't even have office or reception staff. They need terse orders from well-informed customers who know exactly what the factory makes, the technique used, and maybe the minimum orders for free set-up or free UK delivery.

2.
UK government can change the fashion week that we pay for in taxes (through Greater London Authority and Department for Business' UK Trade and Investment).  It can insist that exhibitors are nominated by UK or European factories & display the names of the factories. This would get better value for UK taxpayers' money: UK taxpayers pay to promote employment amongst other UK taxpayers. UK taxpayers promote a clothing brand and a factory for the same budget that just paid to promote a clothes brand in the past; it's two results for the price of one.

Factory-vetted designers are probably reasonable to work with, from a factory's point of view.
At the moment London Fashion Week pays for extra coaching for designers who aren't businesslike - even some in the past who didn't have a way of making the clothes they put on show! There is an export guarantee system that insures their bad debts from overseas buyers,  who sometimes take advantage by not paying. So, in the worst case, a fashion week and UK Trade and Investment subsidy can promote a designer who is hard to work with, then pay the bad debts when the designer isn't paid, and put rival producers out of work because they're not in the PR business and get overlooked. An example is Equity Shoes of Leicester who were overlooked as ethical footwear producers while Terra Plana, who bought shoes from China, got the PR. Both are now closed.


For a long time there was only anecdotal evidence that London Fashion Week helped taxpayers. Now they have a 50 page "Value of Fashion" report in very small print which seems to show huge returns. We know from the Olympics' effect on London tourism that these reports are partly a sales pitch; they are not impartial. Read closely, the report admits the opposite of what the headline summaries say. Estimates of how money circulates are based on decades-old data about how many shoe factories existed in the UK, including many like Equity Shoes that have now closed. Most of the money circulates amongst people who could get other jobs in PR and fashion journalism. And no estimate is made of the cost of crowding-out UK apparel suppliers from the market.

3.
Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indian & Chinese governments can reduce poverty.
The methods that worked in the UK 100 years ago were universal schooling and national insurance. Schooling for girls helped them become more assertive and reduced the rate of child birth. Pensions helped parents plan for old age without having to have as many children as they possibly could.

The first modern national insurance scheme was introduced in Germany, just before its industrial revolution.  It is not too early for Bangladesh to start one now.

The difficulty is how someone in the UK can effect government in Bangladesh, beyond a few factory checks or a fair-trade scheme. This is the next point.


4.
European and US government can change the tariffs that tax trade from countries without democratic welfare states like Bangladesh or China.
This helps people in Bangladesh as well as their cousins in Bolton. There is a consensus.
A formula for tariffs be worked-out over time.

• More democracy earns a lower tariff - there is already a democracy index that could help this one get started.


• More of a welfare state earns a lower tariff.


• More human rights earn a lower tariff. And the reverse could also be true, so a country with more expensive exports because of the cost of a welfare state can still compete on price with China; the worst country no longer sets the market price for garment production.

Western governments are already trying to help eastern ones become more stable and better governed, if only to prevent the tide of misery reaching Europe in the form of wars and refugees. Search "Bangladesh" on gov.uk and find this...

"we are working with Transparency International Bangladesh and other civil society organisations to generate more debate between the government and citizens about progress in improving the providing services like health, education and legal services, and to beat corruption."

Unfortunately, western governments are also paying Bangladesh to keep its poor, with grants, development work and tariff-deals that depend on there being a lot of very poor people in Bangladesh. The rich in Bangladesh do very well out of this system. Their government even has enough free cash to pay for an export subsidy in a country that gets aid from the UK. Factory owners now get some free training for their staff paid by the UK taxpayer. With luck, the firm consistent pressure of conditional tariffs would change their minds and the way they run government. If not, the tariff system would raise some money towards the 0.7% that UK taxpayers pay in aid, to pay for Pakistani healthcare when the Pakistan government only pays 0.8% on health.