Courtney & co: artisan-made buttons, naturally
In a world of global, industrialised garment production, scale is the dominant factor – a trait which impacts button-makers as much as all others in the supply chain. Their output is driven by volume and cost in which the least expensive materials become the default choice. This inevitably means vast runs, running into the millions, of polyester (and similar petro-chemical-based materials) buttons.
Set against this ‘norm’, Courtney & Co is quite a novelty. Firstly, it is less than a decade old (established after the demise of James Grove & Sons Ltd, Britain’s then-leading button-maker, in 2012 after 155 years of trading). These days, button-makers are fewer and farther between and growing in size as consolidation to feed global demand dictates. Start-ups are almost non-existent, too, given the capital costs involved.
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