Sablemark Ltd., registered in England & Wales in 1955, company number 00612884. Thirty-one people, one building, no other sites.
The company has been employee-owned since 2009, when the founding family's last shareholder sold into a trust rather than to a trade buyer. Twenty-two of the thirty-one staff are beneficiaries. There is no external investor and no debt beyond an equipment lease on the second lathe.
| Staff | 31 (24 production, 4 office, 3 despatch) |
| Output | Approx. 9,000 brushes a week |
| References | 214 across six series |
| Export | Distributors in 14 countries; 46% of turnover |
| Contract work | 11 brands; roughly one third of output |
| Site | Torridge Works, Clovelly Road, Bideford — 1,850 m² |
Through the trade only. We have no shop, no online basket and no presence on any marketplace. A stockist who puts our range on a shelf is not going to find us underselling them from our own site next month, which is a promise easier to keep by simply not building the capability.
There is one published trade price list. Everybody on it pays the same price for the same quantity, whether they are a distributor in Japan or a shop in Truro. We have lost accounts over this and we would rather lose them than run two lists.
We are not certified to ISO 9001. We considered it twice; both times the honest conclusion was that a bench where every Kolinsky head is individually tested by an experienced dresser is already tighter than the standard would require, and the money was better spent on hair.
Offcut birch goes to a local firewood merchant. Nickel and brass swarf is collected and recycled. Coating waste is the one genuinely difficult stream and it goes to licensed disposal, which we pay for and do not pretend is neutral. The reworking service is the most useful thing we do on this front: four thousand brushes a year that are not remade from scratch.
All staff are directly employed; there is no agency labour on the benches, because a dresser takes two years to train and there is no such thing as a temporary one. Starting rate is above the real Living Wage and has been since 2018. Two apprentices are taken on every other year, and both current dressing supervisors started that way.
That handmade is automatically better — for turning handles it plainly is not. That our sizes match anyone else's — they do not, and no maker's do. That a brush will last a lifetime — it will not, though a well-kept Series 40 will outlast most of the paintings made with it.