What a run of forty actually means

Forty is not a marketing number. It is the smallest quantity at which our mill will weave a colourway, and the largest quantity our six machinists can finish to standard in a fortnight without the work getting sloppy.

Why not more

Because the tenth garment is where attention starts to drift. At forty pieces the same person cuts, the same two people sew, and the same person checks and presses every single one. At four hundred we would need a second team, a second set of tolerances and a quality control step that samples rather than inspects. We are not interested in that trade.

Why not fewer

Because the mill will not weave it, and because the fixed costs — grading the pattern, cutting the marker, setting up the machines — are spread so thin at twenty pieces that the price would have to rise by a third.

What it means for you

If your size has gone, it has genuinely gone, and the honest answer is that we may not make it again: we only restock when the mill still has the same yarn. When we do restock, the waitlist on the product page hears first. That is the whole system, and we would rather explain it plainly than pretend a sold-out piece is a scarcity tactic.