A Somerset-founded British luxury leather goods and fashion brand, famous for the Bayswater bag, with two factories in Somerset.
Mulberry is a British luxury brand best known for its leather handbags, including the Bayswater, which launched in 2003 and is still one of its best-known designs. It also makes small leather goods, accessories, footwear, and women's and men's fashion. Its own site says its two Somerset factories, The Rookery and The Willows, are the backbone of the business, and that about 600 craftspeople make all Bayswater bags. The company says it is the largest manufacturer of leather goods in the UK.
Roger Saul founded the company in 1971. According to the brand's own story, it began around a kitchen table, selling leather belts and chokers at Portobello Market, made from off-cuts from his father's shoe-manufacturing job, with £500 from his mother. His mother Joan ran production from the family garage in Somerset while Roger handled design and marketing in London. The brand describes itself as "built on skill, support, and ingenuity" and says its balance of town and country, old and new, is central. Its first bag collection came in 1981, and its 1975 collection drew on English hunting, shooting and fishing.
The brand is rooted in Somerset. The Rookery factory opened in Chilcompton in 1973, and The Willows, its second Somerset factory, began production in summer 2013. Wikipedia lists its registered offices as Shepton Mallet and London. A Wikipedia entry notes that a Mulberry apprenticeship programme began in 2006 to train local young people in leather-working skills, and that its graduates have been offered factory jobs. We could not confirm from first-party pages that this programme runs today.
The brand's website emphasises collaboration. For its 50th anniversary in 2021 it launched Mulberry Editions with other designers, including later work with Paul Smith in 2023 and Rejina Pyo in 2024. It also links to pages on being a B Corporation and making products to last, but we could not read the details. Creative leaders have included Nicholas Knightly, who introduced the Bayswater, Emma Hill and, from 2015, Johnny Coca.
A business with factories and a London design base needs many roles: leather cutters, machinists and finishers on the factory floor, designers and pattern makers, production planners and buyers, shop and customer-service teams, and people in digital marketing, finance and sustainability. Working in a place like rural Somerset appeals to people who prefer making things to working in a city office. The company's own site lists current roles.
Website: www.mulberry.com
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