Introducing Beorma Leather Goods

Beorma: A New Beginning for an English Leather Workshop

Longstanding Trunk customers will remember Whitehouse Cox. A number of years ago we were one of the brand's major stockists, carrying a large collection of its wallets, glasses cases, key rings, belts and much else besides, all made in Walsall, the traditional home of English leather manufacturing. When the company ran into financial difficulty in 2022 and closed its doors, we were very sorry to see it go, and it seemed that a workshop of more than 40 people, along with the knowledge they held between them, might be lost for good.

Beorma leather goods factory in Walsall, England.

The story of what happened next was told recently by Simon Crompton at Permanent Style, and it is a good one. Alex Simpson, a former Army bomb disposal expert who had recently returned from Iraq to start a family, was hoping to take up leatherwork again and visited the factory in the hope of picking up some machinery or materials. He left wanting to save the business instead, struck by the skill of the people working there and the quality of what they made. With a commitment from the company's Japanese distributor and a handful of existing orders, he was able to take on a new building and bring back 27 of the craftspeople, who had been made redundant at the end of December and were at their benches again by February. The new company was founded in 2023 and named Beorma, after the Saxon chief said to have founded Birmingham, and it is now the largest maker of fine leather goods in the UK.

What has been preserved is considerable. Whitehouse Cox did much to establish bridle leather, originally a saddlery material and a difficult one to work at small scale, as the leather of choice for wallets and other small goods, and that expertise now lives on in Beorma's workshop. It is also one of the few factories to make bags, belts and small leather goods under one roof, with makers trained to work across all three, an approach Alex brought with him from the Army. The best-loved designs have been kept as they were, while others have been quietly refined, with a curved opening to the card slots on a wallet here and a little less bulk in a briefcase there.

All of which makes this a particularly welcome arrival for us. A considered selection from Beorma is now available at Trunk, including card cases, business card holders and key fobs, alongside the Chiltern tote bag (coming soon), a special make-up produced exclusively for us. It comes from a company that has taken the best of what came before and is building something of its own, and we are very pleased to have leather goods from this Walsall workshop on our shelves once again, in a new and stronger guise.