The Mulberry Made to Last Manifesto
To mark their 50th anniversary year, Mulberry have announced the launch of an ambitious commitment to transform the business to a regenerative and circular model, encompassing the entire supply chain, from field to wardrobe by 2030
Over the last 50 years, Mulberry has been at the forefront of designing and manufacturing leather goods in the UK, but in 2021 they are taking this moment to ask the question ‘Can leather ever be sustainable?’. To answer this, Mulberry are looking at every part of their supply chain to embed principles of regeneration and circularity at every stage.
Acknowledging the environmental issues associated with cattle farming, Mulberry believes the continuation of a long and successful association with leather is dependent on achieving full traceability from farm to finished product, allowing them to put in place a network of organic and environmentally conscious farms to supply the hides that create their leather. This network will provide the foundations of Mulberry’s commitment to a regenerative and circular supply chain by 2030.
Mulberry has always been a brand built on community and locality, and since its inception have remained committed to making more than half of their products in their Somerset factories. Today those factories are carbon neutral and every person working in them is paid a real Living Wage. The company know they have to go much further to make transformational change, and that’s why they are asking the question, ‘Can you make a blue bag green?’. Later this year Mulberry will release their first locally made ‘farm to finished product’ bags using the world’s lowest carbon leather. This collection will represent the future of the business, establishing a model that can be replicated with a network of trusted partners and underpins their commitment to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2035.
Mulberry’s transformative approach to leather sourcing will be reflected in the way they innovate new solutions across their business, from integrating recycled nylon and regenerative organic cotton into our products to continuously assessing and reducing the environmental impact of their packaging and their physical store network.
In asking, ‘Can you teach an old bag new tricks?’, Mulberry highlight their commitment to extending the life of every product through repair, renewal, and repurposing. The Repairs Team at The Rookery, one of their Somerset factories, are masters of restoration, breathing new life into more than 10,000 bags every year, with leather and hardware archives going back over 35 years.
Through the Mulberry Exchange they match authenticated and beautifully restored classics with a new owner, and every one of their bags, be they fifty years or five months old, can find a second, third or even fourth home with another member of the Mulberry community. This platform was launched in store in 2020 and is now live digitally on mulberry.com, alongside a recently launched partnership with Vestiaire Collective, making resale a core pillar of Mulberry’s circularity strategy.
If the day comes that a Mulberry bag really has reached the end of the line, the company will still buy it back and using an innovative energy reclaim system, unique to their strategic partner Muirhead, a member of the Scottish Leather Group, power the production of a new bag, ensuring that the line never ends, it just becomes a circle.
“At Mulberry we have already taken significant action to embed sustainability across our business, but today we offer our commitment to a programme of transformative change, embedding principles of regeneration and circularity across our entire supply chain. We are committed to creating a hyper-local, hyper-transparent ‘farm to finished product’ sourcing model and whilst we are at the beginning of this transition, I am immensely proud of my colleagues and the work done to launch the Made to Last Manifesto. We look forward to the challenges ahead.”
— Thierry Andretta, Mulberry CEO.
To achieve this commitment the Made to Last Manifesto focuses on six key actions for change:
1) Pioneer a hyper-local, hyper-transparent ‘farm to finished product’ supply chain model
2) Develop the world’s lowest carbon leather sourced from a network of environmentally conscious farms
3) Achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2035
4) Continue to extend the life of Mulberry products through repair and restoration
5) Buy back, resell or repurpose any Mulberry bag
6) Extend a commitment to being a real Living Wage employer by working with a network of suppliers to achieve the same
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