can it still carry any kudos?

Did it ever (outside of the UK)?

Sure, for certain products: F1 cars, whisky, some cheeses… British design is still well-regarded, both industrial and fashion.

“made in” doesn’t really mean what people think it does.

I reckon that it still can. Look at HOPE, a shining example of mountain bike design & function, all made here. Obviously others will disagree though.

I reckon that it still can. Look at HOPE, a shining example of mountain bike design & function, all made here. Obviously others will disagree though.

That’s a single company, not a country-as-a-brand. There are plenty of UK companies that are well-respected, I understood the OP’s question to refer to the value or otherwise of sticking a Union Jack on the tin when trying to sell something.

Hope=Hopeless

It should. At the very least it means that what you’ve just purchased may well have kept someone in the UK in employment.

+1 to MuppetWrangler.

If only more felt this way… 🙄

Yes but then it will fall apart 😆

another +1 muppetwrangler.
Especially manufacturing jobs where people can feel proud of what they produce and that their job has some worth

I think we’re at the point now where people look at anything stamped with “Made In Britain”with a kind of “why wasn’t this made in Taiwan/China/Indonesia?” kind of vibe, other than high-end automobiles and aircraft parts

Hope=Hopeless

Can you elaborate? hope are my go to manufacturer, personally love their stuff and never had any issues yet. I “hope” this continues but if not I will rely on their quality customer service.

I do try to buy British first if I can but its not essential.

+1 to ferrit32. I love Hope stuff & I always try to buy from home.

I’ll buy british made if there is a choice, and whilst in NZ i will try and buy NZ made.

However not at the expence of quality, but nowadays the stuff made outside the far east tends to be the higher end anyway, the other stuff went overseas long ago

The rest of the world values the finest things in British manufacturing more than Britain does, thats why they own a large chunk of British manufacturing.

Reid and Taylor in Langholm make some of the best cloth / fabrics for some of the finest suits (British, Italian etc) in the world.
http://www.reidandtaylor.co.uk/
They just happen to be Indian owned.

Kyowa Hakko Kirin of Japan has bought ProStrakan of Galashiels.
http://www.in-pharmatechnologist.com/Industry-Drivers/Kyowa-inks-buyout-deal-for-ProStrakan

Lochcarron of Scotland (Selkirk) plus Peter Scott of Hawick were bought by a South Korean company.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-14011889

Ballantyne of Innerleithen (Cashmere) Italian owned.
http://www.ballantyne.it/

(At one time Innerleithen had the highest exports earnings per head of population of anywhere in Scotland.)

Tomatin was the first Scotch whisky distillery to be wholly owned by a Japanese company.

Scottish Power, a fine Spanish company.
British Energy, a proud French company.

The short termism of the city and the general preference of both politicians and the general populace to work in financial and services industries means that no UK owned manufacturing business really has any hope of continuing. However, as said above other countries value them, so now they’re foreign owned.

means that no UK owned manufacturing business really has any hope of continuing. However, as said above other countries value them, so now they’re foreign owned.

The one I work for is growing at 10% a year 😆 Still you must be right, we have no hope. I’ll just stay at home then, sweet 🙂

It certainly does and the myth that Britain no longer manufacrues anyting is just that – a myth. Our manufacturing output is bigger than France for example and we produce some amazing products made by nice common British people who I am sure are very proud making their airbus wings and f1 cars.

Britain also has produced some absolute crap and some of these companies have gone bust. That’s life and happens in India, China and Taiwan.

Some companies are bought buy foreign interests, companies, investors and guess what, some of these close but most keep going and employ lots of these cheery people happily making their stuff who still get paid and most of the money stays in the country. At the end of the day we live in a global market and want it our way when it suits us but moan when some jobs are lost. Strangely I don’t see too much sorrow at the thousands of jobs HSBC will be shedding this year….

I will never just buy British just for the sake of it if there is something better out there. I guess that’s why I have Shimano brakes and Hope hubs!

Don’t forget all the long term inward investment to utilise UK skills and workmanship

Just around here, off he top of my head

Nissan cars
Komatsu heavy plant
NSK bearings
Cummins Engines

All of them major, long term UK manufacturers

I’ve had 4 Honda cars in the last 15 years; all made in Swindon.

druidh – Member
Did it ever (outside of the UK)?

IME, yes, actually though it depends to some extent on the product.

Hope=Hopeless

Come on Pumpupanddown! Is that it? We all have poor Experiences when purchasing any product, but this is a British company with massive enthusiasm for both engineering and cycling.

Whilst we are on an MTB forum, what about Orange?
I had a conversation with my father in law, who own a Giant Anthem X1 and never rides it off road. He stated that the Giant has to be far superior to the Orange as they (Giant) have millions to invest, so how could Orange possibly compete or build a product which even comes close? My experience of throwing my Orange down the hills of Calderdale on a bi-weekly basis says different. Sad thing is he’s an apprentice trained British engineer. Seems like the age old problem that any British success story gets bashed by the British?

‘Made in the UK’…by a Polish worker…for a foreign owned company.

can it still carry any kudos?

good enough for airbus to have wings made here – though airbus are also starting to make in china.. but then that is where the market is expanding

I’ve had 4 Honda cars in the last 15 years; all made in Swindon.

you would of thought if they made them properly, one would have lasted for 15 years 😉 😉

as a serious note we do actually make quite a lot… just that financial services and service industry always grabs the headlines

‘Made in the UK’…by a Polish worker…for a foreign owned company.

Nothing like a random comment to get me interested. Which company is this then?

the other thing now is that most countries can make things… it is the design that is the important thing.. look at Dyson.. makes stuff overseas, but will soon be up to 700 designers/engineers in wiltshire at their design centre..

I don’t think ‘Made in UK’ carries much kudos in itself, but there are plenty of products that are made in UK that do.

Orange Five
best bike in the world .. nuff said.

According to a recent documentary “made in Britain”.

The UK used to export high volume, low value, easy to copy products. I.e mass production.

These days we export low volume, high value, specialist hard to copy products. I.e batch production.

The examples given (that I can remember), F1 cars, euro fighter, Bromton bicycles.

Interesting that Bromtons are highly sought after in China and according to their own MD. “If we made our bikes in China the Chinese wouldn’t want them.”

In the same doc it stated the UK manufacturing has always been larger than the financial sector.

BBC, must be true.

Airbus wings won’t be made in the UK for much longer as BAe sold off the division to EADS who won’t retain that investment in a non core-stakeholder country for much longer.
As I said above – British owned manufacturing is effectively hamstrung by institutional disinterest and the short termism of the City.

I don’t think the UK government does enough to promote British Made with any kind of a single voice (or any money).

Look at NZ as a comparison. They have all sorts of official marks to put on anything that is NZ Made. They are also very proud of things like NZ Owned, NZ Grown, etc.

It seems a part of their DNA over there to appreciate their own time and effort and have a real sense of pride, yet it happens without any of that negative vibe that the BNP have given some of our emblems over here.

I think there is a great opportunity to do the same here.

Yes, we have a great reputation (along with Scandanavia) for design and (along with Germany) for engineering, and those things are actively promoted overseas, but I’m not sure they are promoted well enough over here for us all to feel that same sense of appreciation.

I cleared my grandparents’ house last year. A lot of the stuff was stamped “Made in England” or even “Made in Sheffield”. Other stuff was simply marked “Foreign”.

you would of thought if they made them properly, one would have lasted for 15 years

Ah well, the first Honda, a 1.4 petrol civic, ran for 10 years and 197k miles before the gear box failed.

The second one, a 1.8 petrol Accord, is 9 years old and is now my GF’s car.

The third one, a 2.0 petrol civic, I crashed 😳

The fourth one, another 2.0 petrol civic, is my current car

Doffs cap to the automotive workers of Swindon 😀

I’d love to be patriotic in my purchasing, but when viewed objectively UK manufactured goods are so often worse than their rivals. Not in concept, but in delivery.

We’re still good at design, but I just get a sense that manufacturing is over in this country. Made in the UK to me unfortunately all too often means “made badly”.

In much the same way a nation’s mindset is betrayed by its railway network, I think automotive industries, where they exist, probably reflect quite accurately the quality of manufacturing in a country.

The Land Rover Defender really is, despite what many ill informed people claim, the best off road car on the domestic market by some margin. Unfortunately it’s screwed together in a way that completely undermines the concept. All the approach angles in the world won’t help a car perform off road if it’s always at the dealer being fixed. Some of the details on the things actually make me wince.

That said, Bloor has done well with Triumph since taking the helm, with manufacture taking place exclusively over here until recently I gather, and JCB still seem to be at the top of their game don’t they?

I can’t really count foreign owned companies here, I must point out. I know we churn out Toyotas and Nissans with great aplomb, but they’re Japanese really aren’t they, lets be honest. And I’m not really saying we don’t still have pockets of excellence. Rolls Royce Aero is still a force to be reckoned with for instance, but I think they are perhaps the exceptions that prove the rule.

I really don’t mind spending more to buy locally either – in fact I do every day – but I can’t really accept substandard products where there is no need for them to be substandard.

We don’t have the obsessive if rather soulless attention to detail of the Germans, nor the flair for beauty at the cost of substance of the Italians, despite them both being our close neighbours. Instead I think we have that “men in sheds” thing, that bodge thing. That “make do” thing. Our nation is built on bodged foundations.

We’ve always had that passion and flair for innovation, and that’s where I think our skills lie. We come up with good concepts, but we then need the Germans or Japanese to come and build it for us otherwise it’ll never work.

More often these days, in the world of bikes, I find myself being drawn towards the “Designed in and for the UK, built by people who know what they’re doing in Taiwan” stuff.

Having said that about our talent for design and innovation, I think this too is slowly starting to get left behind. Design education in this country is suffering, and pretty soon I think we’ll struggle to be thought of in much esteem.

In general I think we’re now too focussed on the past. We’re resting on our laurels. We spend too much time trying to reclaim what we perceive as our glory days, when really we need to be identifying what we need right now, in order to plan for a future we’ll soon be in.

There are countless people out there trying to do just that, but they struggle to be heard in a country full of people banging on about Spitfires and Routemasters and steam trains.

Orange Five
best Frame in the world .. nuff said

FTFY
it isnt a bike until you have added all the parts that make it rideable and I doubt that you will be able to find all the components you need that are british made.

There are things we do well and there are things other countries do well and being patriotic about british manufacturing is one thing but when it comes down to quality you have to sometimes go elsewhere!

Don’t forget all us hardworking chaps at Jaguar LandRover 8)

Admittedly foreign owned but innovative, stylish and highly succesful. The Prime Minister was here a couple of weeks ago and we get plenty of support in the press.

Cars sell very well overseas because of the ‘Made and designed in Great Britain’ badge.

Jackthedog: what a load of old rubbish!

You mention the only vehicle Jaguar LandRover make with a 60 year heritage and 60 year old design. ALL of our other cars are World Beaters – no two ways about it!

FreeLander
Discovery
Range Rover (Evoque, Sport etc…)
Jaguar XF
Jaguar XJ
Jaguar XK

All world class cars and highly desirable because of who we are and where we are located 8)

highclimber I applaud your complete and utter pedantism…………

Pedantry, you mean? 😉

It’s more expensive to build in the UK, therefore to build at the same price, the quality is compromised.

The difference needs to be that WE (as British consumers) appreciate why it costs more and what benefits that provides.

Currently I don’t thing people are educated enough by the government and British manufacturing industry about those things.