‘You can’t bring in robots’: the leather firm handmaking everything from wallets to cigar cases

‘You can’t bring in robots’: the leather firm handmaking everything from wallets to cigar cases In the third article in a series on high-end British manufacturing, we visit the Ettinger factory in Walsall

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“It is all down to attention to detail and everything we do is based around that.”

Gary Billingham is demonstrating how the 28 pieces which make up an Ettinger wallet are cut from leather using a hydraulic press by the small team at one of Walsall’s last remaining leather goods factories. The edges of the pieces are thinned down so they are ready to be turned, glued and stitched together by hand.

Billingham has been at the factory near Birmingham since the 1980s, when “there were three pages in the Yellow Pages” business directory listing leather factories in the West Midlands town. “They were everywhere. It has gone from that to about five factories. It is more like a cottage industry.”

About 20 people, mostly women, work carefully and precisely in Ettinger’s factory – a site of leather goods production since the 1890s – with a handful more doing work from home.

Robert Ettinger, the company’s chief executive, says the vast majority of its manufacturing process has to be done by hand. “You can’t bring in robots.”

He still owns the British brand founded in 1934 by his father, who turned to selling and manufacturing leather goods in the UK after fleeing Nazi Germany via Paris and a stint in the film industry.

Ettinger began making wallets and sourcing leather items, and today the company supplies a range of luxury goods to wealthy customers, including King Charles and Queen Camilla whose royal warrants they hold.

The company’s bestseller is still a wallet, but they also sell leather pill containers, cigar cases, picture frames and various accoutrements for dog owners, from treat cases to dog-waste bag holders, all of which can be personalised with initials.

The brand sits in a niche between the big label luxury and high street with a British hand-crafted leather tote bag for just under £800 compared with more than £2,000 charged by a big swinger such as Louis Vuitton.

An array of machines resembling pastry-cutters are used to punch out leather shapes that are then glued by hand with a brush to build up each item with trims and linings.

The tiny seams around the leather edges are thinned down with a shaving machine, known as a skiver, and turned inward before being stitched with a sewing machine. Each piece is then carefully checked and trimmed using a scalpel and sharp scissors before being polished and wrapped in tissue paper.