Sails; top quality British sails, from China???

[solosails]

Hi,

I own Solo Sails Sailmakers in Cornwall.

We started our loft in Cornwall as a move against the cheaply made foreign sails that seem to be about all you can buy these days. At Solo Sails, we design, cut and build all of our sails in our loft in Cornwall, and we often still beat the Asian companies on price.

Many people have mentioned that there is no problem with buying from overseas manufacturers, but it is important to know that is where they come from. This is why we are very clear that every sail we produce, is made at our loft in Cornwall. We are a small loft, using the very best design and CNC equipment available globally, our overheads are quite low, and so we can build a small amount of sails using genuine quality materials at low prices.

In fact, we have been approached by many well known 'super lofts' asking us if we would like to 'benefit' from their overseas sail manufacturing capabilities. A very good business opportunity for most ... Take the order, let somebody else do the work and just take a cut on top for little or no work. But this is exactly what Solo Sails are trying to compete against, we are making genuine quality sails with quality materials at reasonable prices, all made one at a time. It's about as near as you can get to your 'local loft'

We are proud to be supporting the British manufacturing industry by keeping real skills and wages in the UK.

If you are looking for a good set of British made sails, please do give us a go for your next quote!

Fair Winds!

Andrew Wood

 

[solosails]

I've no objection to sails made anywhere as long as:
a) they are good, and
b) I know where they're made.

What I don't like in this story is the subterfuge of companies passing them off as UK-made sails.

If I buy almost anything else, there will be a label or a stamp giving details of county of manufacture. Why not the same with sails?

This is what we're currently aiming for and as Genuine British sailmakers, have joined the Made in Britain Campaign 'Made In Britain Campaign' which is aiming to get a common made in Britain label on British made Products.

We have already joined and will probably start sewing the labels into our sails which are 100% designed, cut and manufactured at our loft in Cornwall.

http://www.solosails.com

 

[vyv_cox]

I think i recall Hoods now work out of the same factory (maybe the wrong word) as kemps now. hood sails are not made in lymington anymore.

I believe the situation is that Kemps make Hood sails for them (under licence?) I have bought a Kemp stackpack recently but because they know I have Hood sails the new cover has a Hood logo.

 

[Biggles Wader]

Zombie alert.Seven year itch strikes again

 

[Alfie168]

One of my ex neighbours was a top dinghy sailor (Fireball European champ, Olympic trialist in FD) who started his own sail making business over 30 years ago. Its twenty years since he ruefully admitted to me that they had had to move production to China to compete on price with his major competitor, although he did it reluctantly. He said he was half hoping that China would produce rubbish, but he had to admit that after a few early glitches on quality control the product was better than his UK factory had produced.

I don't know where he makes the sales now as the company moved away and his role in the company has changed and indeed they no longer make dinghy or yacht sails and have not for many years now.

I think its the quality of the design and management that dictates the quality of the end product. Not the location of the factory.

Tim

 

[chrisbitz]

You're so right, all the cheap Chinese rubbish I used to buy is still going strong today, the 6 portable DVD players until I found a company not using Chinese patent stealing peasant abusing factories were in fact working fine, it was me that was wrong!

I think the whole of your post was a fairly unpleasant generalisation.

Surely you're aware that there's more than one company in China manufacturing stuff? Some of them make ****, (like in Britain) and some of them make quality products (like in Britain).

You can't generalise about Chinese manufacturing any more than you can generalise about Black people or any other lazy racial stereotyping.

 

[TSB240]

This is what we're currently aiming for and as Genuine British sailmakers, have joined the Made in Britain Campaign 'Made In Britain Campaign' which is aiming to get a common made in Britain label on British made Products.

We have already joined and will probably start sewing the labels into our sails which are 100% designed, cut and manufactured at our loft in Cornwall.

http://www.solosails.com

New user resurecting a long dead thread best of luck with your buy british campaign.

 

[Border Terrier]

One of my ex neighbours was a top dinghy sailor (Fireball European champ, Olympic trialist in FD) who started his own sail making business over 30 years ago. Its twenty years since he ruefully admitted to me that they had had to move production to China to compete on price with his major competitor, although he did it reluctantly. He said he was half hoping that China would produce rubbish, but he had to admit that after a few early glitches on quality control the product was better than his UK factory had produced.

I don't know where he makes the sales now as the company moved away and his role in the company has changed and indeed they no longer make dinghy or yacht sails and have not for many years now.

I think its the quality of the design and management that dictates the quality of the end product. Not the location of the factory.

Tim

Once you get your head round the number of sails sold under our mutual friend's Logo, it's not surprising he "makes" overseas as do the likes of Neil Pride.

I have been buying his sails for a frightening number of years and would not go elsewhere for his speciality sails.

For my bigger sailboat I wouldn't go past Steve Goacher in Bo'ness. If you take your shoes off you can watch your sail being made.

Different scale, the same attention to quality of build.

 

[Jamesuk]

Buy and Elvstrom EPEX and you dont need to worry about child labour in China or having it made outside the top Sibling nations we consider developed economies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sut7GP6_wY0

 

[Mistroma]

I think the whole of your post was a fairly unpleasant generalisation.

Surely you're aware that there's more than one company in China manufacturing stuff? Some of them make ****, (like in Britain) and some of them make quality products (like in Britain).

You can't generalise about Chinese manufacturing any more than you can generalise about Black people or any other lazy racial stereotyping.

Pretty good chance ShipsWoofy won't see your comment, I don't think he has posted anything for about 5 years.

Old thread from 7 years ago resurrected by someone to do a bit of advertising. I can see Nigel's point about old threads.

 

[Javelin]

Since 2000 I was lucky enough to be sponsored by three of the big, so called UK sailmakers.
I retired from top flight racing last year so I'm an ordinary punter now and old thread or not, this is an issue.

I quit the first sponsor when I discovered that the sails I was using were indeed made in the UK but customers wanting sails like mine were actually made in the Philippines.
The quality was dire compared to mine.
The stress patches for example were sewed on top on one side of the sail and not an integral part of the sail, this was true of the main, jib and spinnaker.
I was so angry when I found out and embarrassed as folk had paid over 2k thinking they had bought a race winning sail like mine only to find it was vastly inferior.
There were a number of other issues as well.

The 2nd company had very good quality and lots of innervations that we had helped develop, however after a couple of seasons I was involved with measurement and noticed that so called copies of my sails were significantly different.
Again it transpired that although my sails were assembled in the far east they were not that same patten of the standard sails sold to the public.
They had a different luff curve requiring less pre-bend, the and main & jib were fuller with a looser leech.
When I complained I was told that my sails would be too difficult for average sailors to tune, the fine entry for example was considered far too twitchy for a production sail.
This maybe true but folk wanted to buy sails that I had won the Dutch, German and UK Championships with.

The 3rd company made their sails in the UK and their production sails were identical to mine.
Unfortunately they don't make many yacht sails, especially not fast cruising ones so I doubt I'll be using them now.

 

[npf1]

most sails are cut and assembled in china, with the finishing work done in the UK. One exception to this is Kemps.

There's more than one exception that I can think of.

 

[Salty John]

Here's Dylan Winter's film of his new jib being made by Jeckells in Wroxham. They've been doing it in England since 1831:
http://www.saltyjohntheblog.com/2014/05/sailmakers-art-2.html

 

[doug748]

As Javelin has pointed out this is an issue.

Chris Scanes in Topsham made me a main in five days flat and at a good price. However once the wholesale supplies for small sailmakers begin to dry up, or become uncompetitive, they could well be forced out of business

I note some smaller lofts are offering two ranges. Made themselves, and a cheaper solution, perhaps bought in as part of a franchise deal, with a "designer" label stuck on. As it is far more convenient to work as an agency, rather than on your hands and knees, this may well be a growing trend.

I am biased on the issue. I think there has always been too little regard given to manufacturing in this country. Not enough respect is paid to people who can make things. And far too much reverence is attached to price, over quality and service.

 

[KellysEye]

The quality of a sail is the cloth quality not where it is made or the sail maker. As I've said many times glue is cheap fibre is expensive, low quality sails have more glue and less fibre than quality sails. To check that get samples of the cloth, put a bright light behind each sample and look though a magnifying glass the differences in the amount of fibre are obvious. The highest quality cloth is made by Hood so if you get a sample of that you can see how much lower quality each of the other cloths are and how low you are prepared to go. Bear in mind the highest quality is for long distance sailing, if you potter about at weekends in the summer in light to medium winds the quality probably doesn't matter much.

 

[solosails]

I reckon you want to steer clear of the rabble at www.solosails.com -

They have some pretty dodgy ideas about spam marketing, so who knows what sort of dodgy sails they make.

Just so that the users can make up their own mind about the quality of the 'dodgy' sails we make!

This great little video is of a customer sailing in the Med. Every sail was designed, computer cut, and built by us in the UK at our loft in Cornwall, just as we do with all of our sails. Thanks!

 

[Sans Bateau]

Amazing! I started this thread 7 1/2 years ago!!!

 

[solosails]

Amazing! I started this thread 7 1/2 years ago!!!

Wow, so you did!

I guess the topic is as relevant today as it was then. I'm glad to say that there are still quite a few British Sail Lofts pushing through the hard times and starting to win the battle against Cheap Offshore mass produced sails.

 

[ronsurf]

I once got a severe reprimand for resuscitating an old thread at another forum in my forum-novice days, with a curt notice to go and read the forum rules. And that forum is way friendlier than this one!

Also resuscitating an 7 year old thread to advertise your business seems like a double fault to me!

 

[Bobc]

Forgetting the standards of quality and the service provided in UK or from China, one of the comments in YM was that the imports from China were cheaper - but the savings were not being passed down to the purchaser. That is not a win-win situation, and it could be classed as supplier greediness by people who don't know all the facts (like me).

DD

and that's the key point. People are buying from big-name lofts at top dollar, assuming that they are getting a UK-built product. The margins that are now being made by these lofts are quite rude considering that they no longer need the manufacturing staff or the loft space.