Bean and Bemble: The Yorkshire business which is backing small workshops in Britain
In 1981 the British textile industry employed 583,000 people. By 2003 it was just 145,000.
Last year this country imported £26.4bn of textiles and apparel, with Bangladesh and China among the top suppliers.
Michelle Dodds grew up inside that decline.
Her great-grandmother worked in the West Yorkshire mills, and Michelle watched the trade drain out of the Calder Valley over her own lifetime.
When she started her homeware brand, she refused to accept there was nothing left, and she and her mother spent weeks with a laptop emailing factories and asking who they used.
They found them.
Six years on, every Bean and Bemble product is designed or made in Britain, by nine small manufacturers supporting around 100 jobs.
The collection now runs to more than 25 product types, from velvet cushions and lampshades to tea towels, placemats and greeting cards, sold online, through stockists including the gift shop at Tower Bridge, London, and from the brand's own shop on Hebden Bridge high street, which opened in 2025.
Michelle's great-grandmother, Frances worked at a mill in Laisterdyke, Bradford, during the years when textiles were the lifeblood of West Yorkshire.
Michelle witnessed the rapid decline of the industry decline over her own lifetime, and when she started Bean and Bemble she was determined to find the manufacturers that were left.
“I was fairly sure there must still be brilliant makers in Britain, and it seemed unlikely it had all gone,” she said.
“So, my mum and I sat down with a laptop and started searching. It took weeks.
“Emailing factories, asking for samples, asking them who they used. And there are extraordinary people still making things here, most of them small family businesses much like ours.”
Tea towels and aprons are printed on organic cotton by a British textile printer using Oeko-Tex certified inks.
Greeting cards come from a printer running a solar powered, carbon neutral warehouse. Placemats, chopping boards and coasters are made by a family firm that sends its offcuts to fuel a local power station and its wood dust to compost.
“When something goes wrong with an order, I ring someone I know," Michelle added.
“Not a portal or a form. A person, in a workshop, who'll tell me honestly whether it can be fixed by Friday.
“Every order we place is a small vote for those workshops still being here in ten years. Given what happened to the mills my grandmother worked in, that isn't an abstract idea to me.”
Rachel, business development manager at Orchard Melamine, said: “We have had the absolute pleasure of working alongside Michelle at Bean and Bemble for the last five years.
"It has been wonderful watching her business flourish and we are truly proud to work with a brand that supports British manufacturing."