One of only four remaining fully-fashioned hosiery manufacturers in the world is going from strength to strength in Moorgreen, Nottingham. Fully Fashioned Ltd offers its own brands of lingerie along with fully-fashioned and seam-free hosiery, all designed and manufactured solely in the UK.

The success of the company is largely due to the investments that Director John Franklin-Pryce has made in the business and in nurturing and retaining the traditional skills that hosiery manufacture requires.

"I am passionate about the knowledge and expertise that we have here in the UK. Fully Fashioned uses traditional machinery and skills, it is vital that we celebrate the expertise of our team, train people up and ensure these skills are not lost."

Unique products

John has worked in the lingerie sector for 15 years and in addition to being a Director of Fully Fashioned, he is proprietor or Touchable, the retail side of the business.  We offer more heel styles, colours and design influence than any other company and are proud to manufacture genuine fully-fashioned and circular-knit hosiery in the UK," adds John. "English hosiery manufacture is rare and our specialism with these products is unsurpassed." 

The luxurious range of hosiery and lingerie created by the skilled team at Fully Fashioned is highly sought after across the globe. "Our customers appreciate that they are buying something special. We sell to people from all walks of life and for them it is definitely that they want to be individual, not part of the mainstream."  

Such is the demand that John continues to develop the product range and has formed a unique working partnership with specialist lingerie producer Pat Harman. "Pat's specialist expertise in bespoke lingerie and vast knowledge of textiles is a perfect complement to the skills we have in-house," adds John. "It's great when specialist knowledge can work together for mutual business benefits and it means we can offer customers even more beautiful items."

Smooth running

Keeping the machinery running efficiently is a highly skilled job and vital to the success of Fully Fashioned. It is something that EMB Ltd, the enterprise and economic development company that delivers a range of business improvement services has been able to assist with. "Thanks to the help of a grant that we accessed through EMB we have been able to continue with the renovation and maintenance of the specialist machinery, some of which has been in service for many years."

John explains that complete design and manufacture based solely within the UK is very rare. "Fully Fashioned is able to design, pattern, cut, sew, machine, dye, finish and package every piece here in England."

Continued growth

John is now looking to increase the capacity of the old machines by bringing in some new plant.  "We certainly won't be losing the traditional machine facilities, just adding to them so that we can continue to broaden our range," he explains.  

"We have a loyal and growing client base and it's great to have the support of organisations like EMB  who are focused on helping businesses like ours to build on our strengths in order to develop and flourish."