In October we reached a milestone and became 1 years old - wahooo!!
We rewind to the beginning and review our major goals and desires...
I saw this post at the start of our business journey and often reflex back to what we wanted to achieve in the first place....
Our initial desire was to have a range of essential men's accessories. When we looked at the day to day accessories of a man, it was clear their requirements:
A pair of socks
A Belt
A wallet
Sourcing these were very problematic (a blog post for another time! ) but it was worth it! By November this year we were thrilled to announce we achieved the full set of categories!!
The next step was to infiltrate our values and beliefs, starting with quality.
For us, fast fashion is a cause of so many negative impacts. To throw away or not even wear purchases is mind blowing. The statement above is fundamental, however, it can only be achieved by starting with good quality.
It fills us with so much joy when we have feedback from our first customers who are still wearing their socks today. The shock that they are still comfy and have no holes is a testament that we only deliver the best standards.
Our next focus was design. The aim was simple, originality and timeless fashion.
As a designer, people often make it complex to design something different. They state it's hard to achieve originality because there's so many designs already out there. For me it's rare to look at what our competition are doing or the current trend because I simply design from a spark of inspiration. It could be the pause button on the TV remote or a play with words, I purely design because of passion and in turn I hope originality is seen in our collections.
Another key factor at the start was to make all our collections timeless. With this in mind, socks can look great whichever season they are worn and belts can still be dressed in 10 years time without looking old fashioned.
One of our major values we wanted to keep in place was to be as sustainable as possible and to only work with European suppliers.
Sourcing responsible with European suppliers has so many benefits. Fair trade, fair wages, expertly produced, lower reduction of airmiles and of course supplier visits that can be combined with holidays to Italy and Portugal!! This is a simple value and now we have a superb network, our value is rock solid.
Sustainability can vary from opinion to opinion. It can also keep evolving as the world develops new methods and techniques. Nevertheless, one major stance we are proud of is that all our leather hides are tanned only with vegetables. This might be a longer and more expensive process but it stops the use of all chemicals, ends the pollution of chrome entering our water systems and is honestly a better finish than the conventional method. We will always, without doubt, believe in vegetable tanned leather!
So after one year of trade, we are extremely proud that we met all our goals and trust the future has a lot more to offer from Monty's!
