Two ways of buying from the works: as a stockist of the Sablemark range, or as a brand having brushes made under your own name. Both are handled by the same three people at Bideford.
We make under eleven other names, six of which are better known than ours. That work is roughly a third of what leaves the building and it is why the benches stay full between seasons.
| Item | Minimum | Lead time | Tooling |
|---|---|---|---|
| Existing reference, own branding | 600 per size | 6 weeks | Print plate only, £180 |
| Existing head, own handle profile | 1,200 per size | 10 weeks | Lathe cam, £950 |
| New head specification | 2,400 per size | 14 weeks incl. sampling | By quotation |
| Ferrule in a non-stock diameter | 5,000 | 16 weeks | Draw die, from £2,400 |
Tooling is charged once and remains ours; it is held for you for three years from the last order and never used for anyone else's product. Sampling is two rounds included, further rounds at cost.
What we will not do. We will not make a brush we would be embarrassed to have leave the works, whatever the price point. If a specification is under-haired for its ferrule, we will say so, quote the correct fill, and let you decide. Twice in seventy years we have declined an order outright for this reason, both times for a specification that would have failed within a term of student use.
Contract batches are inspected to an agreed sampling plan and a certificate goes with each pallet. If a batch fails our own inspection it does not ship; you hear about the delay from us before the due date rather than after it. In eleven years of contract work two batches have been stopped that way.
Claims for a manufacturing fault are settled by replacement or credit within one invoice cycle, on the whole batch if the fault is systemic. We do not require the goods back to accept a claim on a quantity under a gross.
Available to any account without asking: CITES documentation for natural hair consignments, FSC chain of custody for timber, material safety data for coatings, and a declaration of conformity for the education range against BS EN 71-3 on migration of certain elements. Toy-safety testing is on the education range only, because that is where it is required.
Tell us what you are trying to buy, in whatever detail you have. A drawing helps; so does a sample of the brush you are trying to better. Quotations for contract work take about ten working days because the price genuinely depends on the fill weight, which we have to work out rather than guess.
Send a trade enquiry