TUSTING is a family-run British heritage company with roots deep in the English leather and shoe trade, and the fifth generation of the family is now at the helm. With over 130 years of experience tanning, grading and trading the world’s finest leathers, they reinvest this deep and expert knowledge of leather with the skills of talented craftsmen and women to make wonderful, heirloom-quality leather goods which combine truly original character with unmistakable quality. Edinburgh graduate of physiology and pharmacology, Gillian Tusting is at the helm for all things brand and customer-related, using her wealth of management consultancy experience to oversee customer experience and ensure that TUSTING never waver from the qualities and values that their customers love so much. University of Cambridge graduate, Alistair Tusting first spent time working in product design for a global power tool and hardware manufacturer, but longing for a little more glamour, he turned down a place on an MBA to join the TUSTING family business in 1990.
In this episode of the MenswearStyle Podcast we interview TUSTING Director Alistair Tusting and Head of Brand Gillian Tusting about the rich leather making heritage of their family business. Today, the brand's leather goods are made in England and shipped all around the world to customers in Japan, America, and China. Our host Peter Brooker asks them about the various technical processes involved in making a leather bag, why full grain leather is durable and gets better with age, sourcing leather from the best tanneries, and how the in-house repair service helps customers save their beloved bags when accidents happen.
Whilst we have your attention, be sure to sign up to our daily MenswearStyle newsletter here. We promise to only send you the good stuff.
TUSTING is a family-run British heritage company with roots deep in the English leather and shoe trade, and the fifth generation of the family is now at the helm. With over 130 years of experience tanning, grading and trading the world’s finest leathers, they reinvest this deep and expert knowledge of leather with the skills of talented craftsmen and women to make wonderful, heirloom-quality leather goods which combine truly original character with unmistakable quality. Edinburgh graduate of physiology and pharmacology, Gillian Tusting is at the helm for all things brand and customer-related, using her wealth of management consultancy experience to oversee customer experience and ensure that TUSTING never waver from the qualities and values that their customers love so much. University of Cambridge graduate, Alistair Tusting first spent time working in product design for a global power tool and hardware manufacturer, but longing for a little more glamour, he turned down a place on an MBA to join the TUSTING family business in 1990.
In this episode of the MenswearStyle Podcast we interview TUSTING Director Alistair Tusting and Head of Brand Gillian Tusting about the rich leather making heritage of their family business. Today, the brand's leather goods are made in England and shipped all around the world to customers in Japan, America, and China. Our host Peter Brooker asks them about the various technical processes involved in making a leather bag, why full grain leather is durable and gets better with age, sourcing leather from the best tanneries, and how the in-house repair service helps customers save their beloved bags when accidents happen.
Whilst we have your attention, be sure to sign up to our daily MenswearStyle newsletter here. We promise to only send you the good stuff.
Hello and welcome to another episode of The menswear style podcast. I'm your host Pete Brooker. On this episode I'm going to talk to Alice, the testing, Director of testing and Jillian testing, head of brand at testing. I'm going to peel off little info on the website here to give you the story. And by the way, the website www.testing.co.uk. They say we specialise in beautiful bags and leather goods for work, play and travel Meticulously crafted by our team of experts at our London workshops in the heart of the English countryside. five generations of knowledge and experience go into every piece blending timeless style and contemporary flair. So that interview of Alice during Julian to come, I really enjoyed it, learn a lot about the importance of having products made in England. And that's not just us blowing, smoke up our own trumpets. That's a phrase. But as that will go on to explain how their customers from all over the world really appreciate and acknowledge the symbolism that it denotes a certain quality as it were. Alistair will explain it more eloquently than that, but it's it's one of many great points that we'll touch upon in this chat. And before we get to that with Alistair and Jillian, don't forget to check out the show notes at menswear. style.co uk and on the social app men's wear style. The latest fashion news, Craig, our editors just published an article on stylish glasses that protect your eyes. You think you survived the summer about having to splash out on a pair of sunglasses. But what about the winter a with the low sun rays reflecting from the snow surface that can be hazardous. Write that article and much more on the website. And if you want to tell us about your brand and your journey, you can email the show at info at men's West art or Koto. UK Okay. Let's get to it. This is a good one. Hope you enjoy that interview of Alistair and Jillian testing director and head of brand at testing. Well, it's my great pleasure to introduce Alastair testing director at testing and Co Ltd. And we have Jillian testing as well head of brand at testing lots of testings going on. How are we doing today? What is the family company? You know? Yeah, the family company. I think that that's is actually one of the key things that we've got real heritage behind what we're doing, and trying and doing our best to keep that moving forward to the 21st century into the 21st century. Yes. So I did some research. It's this the fifth generation of, of leather, good manufacturers. It's a fifth generation of leather people when we started in leather, so we haven't been manufacturing leather goods for all that time. But we have been in leather. And so it was my great great grandfather, who started making leather in a local village she was here. And we his as his descendants we've been carrying on that. And we're all one way or another pretty much I wouldn't say affected by the disease, but we seem to carry on quite a lot in the leather trade. And we took it from just leather. Our customer base was focused very much on the UK leather trade even though we trade around the world. But when the leather trade in the UK was the shoe trade in the UK was declining. 30 odd years ago, we realised we needed to diversify in us how could we use our skills and our knowledge and our love of the material better? And at that point, an opportunity came along with some people and we thought right let's use our leather knowledge and the skills we could get. And we started making leather goods and luggage at that point. Okay, interesting. And so what is your what is your role there Asana, you're the director but kind of walk me through your day to day doing testing. My day to day is doing. I'm I think sort of were the top of the pile I suppose within testing really. So my day is we have a manufacturing team who in bright nearly eight o'clock every morning and this that they getting on with the programme, our production plan our work. And as much as I really like spending my time looking at them and looking at making bags. And for me, I spend a lot of my time doing other things, rather than just making bank but I'll be very, very happy person actually does spend most of my time working with leather making product and shipping, great things that we've made to our customers around the world, right? I mean, the bag look fantastic, by the way. I mean, like all of the bags, you have handbags, you have travel bags, and backpacks, maybe you can just give me a little insight into how much love and TLC goes into making just say one bag. Well, the bigger the bag, the more work he has actual physical work goes into it. But all of them, I've got to have the same commitment to wanting to achieve the best we can achieve on every single one. And so that that commitment is going to be in everybody doing it, everybody working on the bag. So you have that, as with most production processes is broken down to the stages haven't, we have people who can do the whole whole task from start to finish. But actually, we, it's better when you break it down. And people are really good individual operation. So the people doing the cutting, let's leave the casting to them, they've spent a lot of time looking at leather working with the leather to to cut it as best they can for what each bag needs for each. So to maximise the the leather for each one each product, you then got team of people doing this as a preparation work, which is very much sort of behind the scenes where you take those cut pieces of leather, and you work on them to check there, okay, you do the edge finishing you do the preparation work for the actual machining. So the machining doesn't happen on its own, you've got to get it ready to be machined. So there's a whole load of people who who work those raw components to get them ready for the actual thread needle sewing interaction. And so we have a team of people getting product the the components ready, you then have people who do the actual sewing, and they they have been doing the selling for many years, it I do sell incorrectly, that's probably takes about as long as anything to learn it to get it right to do it beautifully, to make sure that the stitching is as good and as clean as possible, they can make it takes a long while to get done to get learn the skills to do that, right. And so we have to have people doing machining. And so we have one and that split into two we have one group who do the machining that works sort of in two dimensions the flatbed machining, and they do a lot of the details machining work on the flat components. And they go as far as you can on a regular sewing machine, which looks like a domestic sewing machine but is but bigger and, and heavier. And then we move on to the people who take the flat pieces of work and assemble them into the three dimensional structure that is a bag. And so they have different sewing machines, which is sort of almost with a mechanism floating in the middle of the air. And they they take the two dimensional pieces and they build them together, finish them. And we then have a final group who do the packing in inspection and shipping for those finished pieces. Wow. So it's it's, it's, it's a it's not the most it's not the longest processes, but there are lots of individual stages in it. Where lots of skill being deployed all the way through and the sewing and the stitching. Is this how you can distinguish or discern what is a quality bag versus what is just you know, a kind of off the rack bag. I mean, is this one of the tells. I think it's one of the tells. Yes, I think I think if you're looking at a piece of luggage or a handbag, obviously you want the stitching to be consistent and neat and uniform throughout the whole piece. But it's it's just one of the elements You need you've got to eat there is you need to combine that skill stitching skill with the materials. And because you can use you can buy bags made around the world which have pretty good stitching in them. But they don't use materials which are going to have tell the same story or give the same joy that using the natural leathers is going to do. And you can buy fantastic. P you synthetic materials now which look very true when you buy them very similar to leather, but they're never going to have that lifetime. and generate the patina and generate the character of being used and loved. That leather products do and the using really good leathers and using great linings and things there. Yeah, it's a combination is not just the machining is the machining, it's the the material choices, and the care with which the whole thing is put together. Yeah, that's one of the key differences between between a product such as we make and a lot of the competition in they will tend to to have used cheaper materials in order to maintain their margins. And those cheaper materials will initially when they're new look possibly indistinguishable from beautiful new leather, full grain really top class leather, but in the use, they will tend to go downhill and show where and then you see things underneath the colour that didn't start out as leather or maybe the innards of leather. Whereas if you start with really top class full grain leather, it will just polish and get better. And if you throw the insults of life at it, it just kind of soaks it up and becomes characterful. Whereas something which is more coated with with a lot of leathers now are, they have the surface taken off and replaced with a with a p u coating for durability, apparently, but it's plastic durability and you know, 10 years down the line, that's when you really know the difference, and the cheaper ones will be on the junk keeper and the genuine thing and will will actually know better. Or it's, you know, as long as you don't mind something that shows a bit of life, and it will still be going strong and more to the point can come back to us and be repaired. You know, if there's some wear and so on, that's something that we do a lot is, is fix old bags up particularly briefcases and not gash. And, and that's just not an not something that you can get easily elsewhere is not necessarily the most economically sensible thing to be offering to repair and look after gentleman's bags. But they it's a typical thing that we get briefcases back of people who have loved them for many, many years, and they want to carry on loving them for many years yet. And we help them do that. And actually, that's a reflection of the quality and the care that we put into the product is that people do want their 10 year old briefcase or 20 year old briefcase, coming back and saying, could you fix this? Could you do something is being run over by a truck or something? Can you help us? And we do our best to say, you know, sometimes banks are too far gone. But most of the time, we can help somebody maybe a little better together. Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess it becomes it becomes part of their day to day life. I mean, it they almost maybe get emotionally attached to it because it's it's something that they'll take a take with them wherever they go. And something that grows and like you say becomes, the more insults you throw at it, the character it gets. Yeah, it almost becomes an extension of self and and, and if you if you have to part with it, then you're parting with something that really means something and saying goodbye to some of the memories that are that are loaded up in it as well. I think that's you know, people don't want to do that. Yeah, yeah, it's irrational, to be fair, but it can be completely irrational. We have had people come back with sort of this piece of lace work, which once was a great bag, but it's been worn and used. And they say well, can you just put it back together for us? And there comes a point even with there's just, there's just not enough fibre. So together, you know, the literally the linings are just a shred and the leather is completely and utterly worn away. And they'll still want it now and they still want it back and you say well, we can do our best But we really think you should at this point, you need a bag. Yeah, I places where cases where people have said, All right, I have a new bag, but fix your one as well and you know full well, but they're doing that because they don't want to say goodbye to their friend. And that's a lovely thing. This is the relationship I have with my socks and my girlfriend. So I'll say to my girlfriend, like, you know, these have got at least another three years in them and she's already motioning towards the bin. But then I say, Well, look, hold on a moment, these socks can go out and they can polish the BMW after we're done here. You know, there's so much life left in these socks. You can't just be so dismissive. I mean, she leaves my sock whenever we go away, you know, she'll have a quick inspection and you go, right, I think we can leave this one in the hotel. You know, this is a sustainability argument. Because if you can repurpose their socks into car polishing cloth, then that's all good. Exactly. You gotta think the socks, right? It's okay sock, you know, you've got another year or two left. You just need to make sure you're the last one out the room. The hotel because you can always do a little Scantron Ah, yeah, that's nice. You get the impression that he's been there. I've, I've I feel like we've bonded on that. Yeah, I mean, I haven't gone as far as call the concierge after we've left and say, Can you just fish that one out. But if you were understanding each other, and I and the girlfriend are understanding each other, too, I have to say it's that it's that emotional attachment we have with our socks, it's an unwritten rule. I digress. alysa, perhaps you could tell me a little bit about the lever and how you source the lever. And it also mean, just kind of the lever in general, I hear all the time about Italian leather being the kind of the best in the world, maybe you can, maybe you can drill down on that a little bit for me, um, leather is, it's one of the primary resources that humans have used. Since we move forward from just being neandertals, pretty much even then it's probably one of the earliest raw materials that humans have used. And so all around the world, there is leather being made. And the real the skillful people around the world making leather. But there are a number of things you need to make great leather. You need people with skill and knowledge of what they're doing. And Italians have a great industry of doing that. But you also need to have the right sort of raw material. So if you buy leather that's come say, South America, there's some leather that comes out of South America, which is very typical. And the actual hides that made, the leather is made from hybrid, the animals have a pretty rough life. And the hides show that in there, the markings in this the the abrasion and the scratches that are in the leather. And those, you can't ever really get rid of them, and make beautiful, beautiful leather. So one of the first things you need is some raw material. That is the animals have led a blessed life. And so the skins, the actual skin itself is a beautiful thing. And the leather making skill is you take that beautiful skin and make it better and make it more beautiful. And that's what you're looking for in the leather you're buying. It is a combination of raw material, and the skills used to make that into something that we can we can use in all the ways that leather can be used. And so in our sourcing of leather, you're looking for tanneries who have access to great raw material. And there are places in the world ways of rearing your animals which help preserve the quality of skin so Scandinavia and cowhide tends to be good because they have few barbed wire. There's not very much barbed wire on the fence in the fencing and in the way you husband the animals. So the animals don't scratch with barbed wire, so you don't end up with her and and no insects biting and no insects biting them. That's fascinating where you go to some parts of Africa or some parts of India or we may get skin there's a lot more insect life. There's a lot more Things that are going to damage that hide thorns and stuff. And you will get skins which are just covered in Thorn marks and scratches. And for our type of leather and what we're doing with it, we don't consider that to be a perfect thing. And so we got to buy leathers that come from places where you have good animal husbandry that helps us hides happy cattle. Yeah, right. So we, you need the good raw material, you need good people who understand what they're doing with the leather and skilful. And then you build relationships with the tanneries because they got to understand what we're trying to do with the leather. And we've got to tell the tenor is this is what we want, we need our leather a bit more supple, we need the grain to be a little less pronounced to be a bit smoother or, and it's very difficult to specify lever to show its naturalness, without building that relationship with the tenor, and the customer. So we've got three tanneries, we work with a lot. And you got to build that relationship with them, that they using the right raw materials, they're consistent to use the same raw material every time as far as you possibly can. Because tanning leather is both science. It is a very technical science. But on top of that, there's some real art and understanding how the environment so one hot day, you've got to be more careful with how you tan the leather than on a cold day. Things like that make a difference. And that's the tanning art. And so you build your relationship with the tenants so they know what you're looking for. And you keep that relationship open so you don't buy you don't just go and buy the leather on them. Just phone somebody up, send me some leather. You've got to understand the people you've got to they've got to understand what we're doing with our our leather and how we cut and we bought that relationship. Okay, and have I imagine you've worked with the free tanneries I mean, over the course of since you've been in business as 1875 Have you can't imagine you've chopped and changed many tanneries is it? We know that the people in the tannery, we know the owners, we know the tanneries we're working with and we have long term relationships with those. So some of the tanneries are the tanneries which my father, my grandfather was working in on with 6070 years ago, well, there are people who we still work with. So there's this these really long relationships that are embedded in what we do. I imagine it must be those sort of relationships where your clients, and you're kind of suppliers, if that's the right word, they're kind of on the constant Christmas card list. You know, there's there's always something that gets sent. I mean, my, my dad was a steel merchant, and he would always, you know, the same suppliers would send the same wine every year. And he would say the same thing from the butchers. I mean, it was it was so predictable. But yet there was something quite quite beautiful about it. But yeah, I can imagine, you know, you have the same same thing, you have this group of people who you work with, both on the tanning industry at the leather, but we maintain that consistency of even the the hardware suppliers, the people who do the maintenance zips for us we have we want those long term relationships because that gives us consistency so that if you come and buy your replacement clip, a bag that you've used for 20 years, you want to know that the next one is going to be better than the last one and you really like the last one. So the next one is going to be fantastic. And that comes from all of those relationships, all of that family business relationship with your suppliers. And it makes it more efficient for us in how we work the company in that you're pretty sure you know who the who you're going to buy that leather from when you're developing a new product. Or you know, where you're getting the hardware or the zippers. It it's it is not that those relationships preclude innovation, because each one of these suppliers is working on new products and new innovation all the time but you have a an understanding of what you're trying to get to achieve together. Yeah, and I guess these these relationships need to be fostered and nurtured over the years and talking about new products do you have Any other any other items that you've you've thought about trying or any other, perhaps garments? I mean, you used to supply the levers for shoes, have you ever thought about going into that area? Shoes, shoes, shoes is really difficult because we have relationship relationships with the shoe factories. And we know it's a tough old life making shoes. And you also, they've got the skills they built over the long term to make to enable them to make product, which is the best shoes they can make. So I think our, our take on that is that we have certain skill sets, we want to maximise and use our skills as best we can. And so although there are areas we we keep pushing the boundaries and different areas, but actually we know that some things are probably just one step too far for a squirrel all the time. Also, I think there's there's some really wonderful shoemakers in our area, and who make, you know, the best shoes in the world. And it would it would be a brave person who decided they could match or exceed that from scratch. So as much as we know plenty about the leather, and, you know, sometimes you should let the people who are really good at things, the things that and yeah, and we'll stick to so we're here now. Yeah, we're just on the edge of Northamptonshire. Actually, we're talking to you from Northamptonshire. And Northamptonshire, still actually has some fantastic, Jillian says, shoemakers, and we know them and they do a fantastic job. And I would not like to presume that we can do what they're doing but equally when they need bags. They come and see us because they know that we can do bags. That's nice. That's good to know. Yeah. Northampton is that's not too far away from from my mum's as well, that's pretty much the epicentre of shoemaking Oh, absolutely. Churches of Crockett and Jones is down there, but I know. Yeah, they're in Northampton. So they're all they're all in Northamptonshire. So you've got in the middle of North Hampton, or not. Now in the middle bit, you've got church and Crockett, you've got there in Kettering a million miles away, you've got love, you've got evergreen, you've got trickers and then you've got outside, you've got cine, and on our doorstep right here, where we're sitting, we've got we've got MPs, and Dr. Mike Norton make some of their, their product back in, in, in the county, and having you know, previously offshored all of that so and there's there's a good resurgence there as well. Yeah, I mean, the story that that resurgence in making here for the some of the shoe factories is driven by overseas customers, especially in Asia, wanting that heritage of made in England, in their, whatever they're buying. And that's this really strong thing for us a strong story and message that we tell to our customers overseas is you're buying into that heritage, when you're buying a testing product, it's very much a common point for all of the shoe a shoe makers, the top shoe makers and leather goods makers in Britain, we all have m R. P part of our markets is export and specifically to em to Eastern markets because they hugely value that made in Britain thing and back. You know, it's often the question asked, but how important is it to make in Britain? And the curious answer is it's more important to our overseas customers than than it is to the UK customers. Which is odd, but nonetheless, it's it's a thing. Yeah, so Japanese customers want the made in England and they'll pay a big premium for the made in England rather than a made I know in Thailand or somewhere like that. They want the made in England. That's a big story for them. That's fascinating. I mean, it kind of makes sense. Oh, is that would you say the outside of that though? Is the main demographic in England for you? Well, we're exporting a good half of what we make, aren't we Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's well split. To be honest. We have very strong market in in America, in Japan and in China. That's slightly coals to Newcastle when it comes to making leather goods. But again, in China, you've got a really fast growing demand for British luxury goods. And so it's the kind of following, perhaps, if I'm brave enough to say where the Japanese have been for a few decades, really on that demand, and, and, and so it's kind of even really about what we're selling, you know, we probably sell as much overseas and more than we sell in the UK. And those Eastern markets are that are there, the toiling a bit at the moment. But most places around the world are toiling. But there's still a lot of demand there for us. And we're with, we're more part of our growth strategy for the next two years to get us out of the turmoil that is COVID is to build customer bases out in Asia. Okay, so a lot of my day when you said started, say was my day start like, well, this starts with bit of making and talking to be real making product. And then I talked to team out in Asia who are helping sell put on athanasia. Force. Okay, interesting. And so the, the website, by the way, it looks really good, I should give people a place to go testing.co.uk is, has a great kind of layout, too. It's very easy to navigate your way around, how long is the e commerce site been on and and what was the process of getting that all up and running? bizarrely, am testing has been was a really early adopter. On the website front, the first one goes back, I should think 20 years. Yeah, pushing pushing ideas. I mean, from the really, really early days of people having websites, and it was an e commerce website right then and there. And we didn't really, I don't think we really knew how to promote the website in those days, but it so just was founded naturally. But there weren't very many people doing websites for their made in Britain leathergoods, it wasn't that hard to get found. But and so. So we've, we've been doing it all along. And the current website has been in the in sort of the existing design for probably about two years now. And, and something which we, you know, care an awful lot about is that the customer experience, and it's everything from their first interface with us, which usually now is the website, right through to every email to every phone call. And you know, we're only a little company, so you will get a personal experience. And we kind of wanted that feel for the website so that people could see the beauty of the product, but still feel that they knew what actually went into it. And that there were real people in a real country in a real county making it all and you know, that we're very approachable. Should should you want to, you know, ask a question, right? And we have, we have people who spend a lot of time working on talking to customers about working through their, their requirements, and so many of our customers will phone up and want, can you do this for me? Can you even, it's just talking about shipping, and that customer services is is key to, to the relationship people are going to have with the products we're going to sell to them because they want to know that it's not only the product, but the way they're treated is the right level. We all like that we all like to feel that somebody really cares about selling something to them. Right. It's, it's, I've got to tell you, it's massively important because just again, I'm gonna digress, but I'll bring it all the way back round. Just in the last couple of weeks, I've had two exchanges with supposedly big businesses. One being a gym, and one being a phone company, now had trouble with my phone it powered down and never came back on. And ironically, I couldn't even reach out and call them. You know, I couldn't even call them from my phone to resolve it. Yeah. So it kind of sent me around in like online emails and chat bots and help rooms and forums. But I thought this is so surreal that there's a phone company and there's no one on the other end of this phone can help me resolve this problem. The same with the gym. The gym is just down the road. I tried to cancel it on the subscription went in and they said you have to go away and download an app and cancel it. I said Well, I'm kind of standing right in front of you can can we not do it here and now let's have a go and by the way, I did it all again and downloaded the app and cancelled it and they still tried to take money out of my account. My but you can imagine you came away from that experience. Feeling ticked off with them unhappy? And just with a sense of disenfranchisement? Yeah. Well, why do you have to do that? All I want to do is for you to listen to me and do what I asked you to do. I've asked you politely to do it. And that I find it hugely frustrating when somebody just puts a stupid barrier in your way. Or they could have said is Yes, sir. No problem, I can cancel that for you now. Well, it's all about time, really, I think it's the only commodity that no one really puts any premium on. But it's the only thing that we actually have his time. And if I'm spending three days, four days back and forth to the phone shop, then to the gym. And then by the way, nothing's resolved by the end of three weeks, it just becomes like this endless circle. So I employee really just got to hang on to that personal side of your business. I mean, even on the website, I can see that you can come down and visit the showrooms. You know, have the walk around, is that still going on, by the way, admits a panoramic picture? Yeah, I mean, we just at the moment, we just kind of have to do it by appointment, rather than people just show up. Because obviously, we have to be careful of shielding the workforce. But that time thing that you say is, is so key, because what's actually happened with those companies that are not giving you what you want is they've prioritised their time and their systems to make themselves efficient, and forgotten. What it means for the customer. And, and actually, the whole business is about the customers, if the customers aren't happy, they're not going to have a business. But there they are shooting themselves in the foot, because they've just to, you know, really pissed off the customer. It's really not difficult, you know, if you just put the customer first and say, What does the customer want? How do I make it fab, for the customer will will, you know, Scrabble like swans underwater making it happen. But fundamentally, if the customer is happy, they're going to come back, and back and back and back. And it's really simple. It's so simple. It's difficult, I guess, I don't know where that switch has to occur, where businesses kind of get so emphatically big, that they can no longer be reachable. And that I know, basically, that you have to kind of be this huge monolith. And they don't want people like me just coming along and exploiting everyone's time, whatever. But it does feel like there has to be some kind of cut off where they just go, you know what, we will just put this guy on an answering machine, send them around on choose option one for this, use option two for that. And by the end of it, you've wasted half an hour, and you've got no way. I just gave you about a month of my life during lockdown there. So sorry about that. But I'll let it all out. But it's just a slight window into my frustration of big businesses. I think I think part of what we're trying to do is is, is keep the human side of our business strong and alive. Because I think it's we think it's hugely important events, then the people like our products and want our products, not just because they're great products, but there's some humanity behind them. Yeah. Well, I, I felt like I've learned a lot today. So it's been, it's been wonderful speaking to you both. And I want to be respectful of your time. So perhaps just send people to the website, which is testing.co.uk to find out more about the products and have a moocher around and get lost within the story and all the great imagery on the site. And, and yeah, I guess hopefully I'll speak to you soon. And I wish you best of luck. That'll be fantastic. If you are up in Northamptonshire, give us a call. We'd love to show you around. I love that. Yeah, no, I'd love that. And that's not too far away from me when I go on tour. Yes, yeah. Give us one of your your your other, your other things you're going to do as a virtual tour. That would be amazing. Actually. Maybe that's a conversation for later. Yes. I'll hit pause and we'll carry on. Excellent. Thank you, Julian. Thank you Alastair. You're very welcome to talk to you YouTube, Bobby. Well, how about that really enjoyed that one. And if you don't have a deeper appreciation for quality leather bags and accessories, and there is no helping you. So make sure you're supporting the good guys and head over to testing codit uk and for yourself or your loved one, some quality leather goods and put some money in the local economy while you're at it. In the meantime, thanks for tuning in. If you like what you're hearing, leave a review. Maybe there's a brand or a person you think would be a great guest on the show. Put your suggestions in a comment on iTunes or wherever it is that you listen until next time.