Restrap founder Nathan Hughes is refreshingly honest when asked about the origins of his company: "Basically, I used to go to scrap yards and cut out car seat belts to make pedal straps to sell to my mates”.
But why? What was his inspiration? Again, the answer is direct and straight to the point: “I was fresh out of college and needed to do something, so was just tinkering about with a sewing machine, making a few bits. I fully expected at some point to get what I call a ‘proper job’. Like a lot of us, I was a bit skint when I was younger, so I was just trying to make a few quid. Because I was into bikes, I made some stuff for my bike and then it evolved from there”.
It’s exactly the sort of straightforward and unassuming statement you’d expect from this Leeds-based brand: after all, they’re Yorkshire through and through. There are no airs and graces here.
As Hughes’ love for cycling expanded into road and mountain biking, as well as bikepacking, this sparked the idea of building more and more super-tough bags, luggage and bike accessories, encompassing everything from bar packs and commuter backpacks to dry bags and panniers. As the product range increased, Hughes needed more help to meet demand and more manufacturing space to work in. So, he gathered together a collective of cycling-obsessed creatives and sourced a workshop in Leeds.
Today, the company is a close-knit team of machinists, designers, family and friends. They’re all genuine outdoor enthusiasts too. “When we’re not sewing, we’re out and about putting our products through rigorous testing, getting ourselves and our stuff as wet, muddy and well-used as possible.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the sewing department is the biggest department in the company. There are currently 16 machinists – but this is no sweatshop-style production line. Forget those images of rows of workers hunched over sewing machines like battery hens. Helen, Restrap’s Head of Operations (who also happens to be Nathan’s mum), explains: “We don't work on a production line; we work as little teams of either two or three people. They get their daily work, but they can arrange it any way they want between them. Individually, there’s quite a lot of autonomy.”
It's clearly a system that works, since Restrap typically runs to a 109-110% productivity rate. In other words, the teams over-perform.
It’s also a perfect demonstration of the company’s values in action, with the emphasis or making things by hand, in the UK, using sustainable materials and local labour. Some 70% of their materials are sourced from British businesses, including webbing from the oldest webbing manufacturer in the world, super hardwearing metal components and precision magnetic closures. This close relationship all the way down the supply chain ensures unsurpassed quality control. In Hughes’ words, not only do you get the best materials, it also saves the hassle of dealing with an overseas supplier – if something needs discussing, you pop down the road for a cuppa rather than booking a flight to the Far East. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, this also ensured that Restrap was a lot better prepared to survive than most other companies.
The brand’s products require a lot of raw materials. The factory floor is a myriad of fabric rolls, webbings and components. It’s all handled by a small team of four, who look after their own maintenance and quality control. They keep a tight rein on cost and quality. This extends to meticulous waste management too. All plastic waste gets collected to be chipped and made into something else, while all cardboard waste is bailed and recycled. Even fabric is cut as closely as possible to minimise scraps. Other waste such as the inside of the webbing rolls is redistributed to craft shops, schools and charities. All remaining materials and offcuts are weighed every week to track and monitor wastage.
Helen explains: “We source things as locally as we can to reduce miles. We don't greenwash the sustainability, we just look at all those little different bits to try and minimise the products’ overall footprint as much as we possibly can. And everything has a lifetime warranty, so we stand by the workmanship. If it's broken or got a hole in it, it comes back, we'll fix it and send it back out.”
Of course, it’s the people who actually build Restrap products that have been the secret to their success. Since the workshop is full of bike nuts, most of their designs are born from experience in the saddle, which also means that the people operating the sewing machines know exactly how those frame bags and dry bags should perform in the outdoors. It’s a productive, creative environment that means when you hold a Restrap product, you know it’s been designed and built to be 100% fit for purpose. The in-house word for this approach is ‘overkill’. It means that every single product has been sketched, prototyped, created, adjusted and tested until the brand has an end result that the whole team is happy with. It’s a process of innovation and iterative improvement – not a case of just reproducing what is already available.
As Nathan says: “There are little things from a geeky perspective that a lot of people won't notice. Like, all our frame bags are aligned so you can't see the inside edge of the zip, which means you can't get grit and stuff under there. Then we have the internal organisation, plus details like port holes for cables.”
All in all, it’s fair to say that Restrap has come a long way since the early days. Nathan recalls: “Technically I think the first product was conceived about 14 or 15 years ago. We became a Limited Company in 2012 but before that Restrap was just me as a Sole Trader. It went from the back bedroom to a small workshop, then to a slightly bigger workshop and now we're in a 13,000 square foot factory. It's hilarious, it’s amazing and it's something we're hugely proud of.”
This is all the more incredible when you learn that his first ever set of pedal straps weren’t even sewn – at that time, he hadn’t even bought a sewing machine. The Restrap logos were applied with a screenprinting kit he purchased on eBay. “That was really back in the day when a lot of us were riding fixed gear bikes and doing a bit of bike touring. Obviously, the straps were a bit less durable back then ‘cause people weren't using them for riding around the streets”.
Nathan’s grandad helped him make the first wooden jig for drilling the holes in the early pedal straps. His first ever sewing machine was set up in a back bedroom of the family home.
“Originally, I had a domestic sewing machine from Aldi. I think it was 50 quid, but obviously trying to sew through this stuff it didn't last very long. Then I spent about 200 quid on a second-hand machine, which I guess is usually how most people start. The good thing with sewing is that it's quite a low barrier to get into. Although it doesn't stay cheap…”
After the straps, they moved to ‘on body’ kit – backpacks and messenger bags. It proved trickier from a design perspective, since kit preferences are so personal. As Nathan says, “Some people like more pockets, other prefer fewer pockets. Whereas with a frame bag, if it fits your bike frame it's the right one for you. But we ventured into bags and packs because not many people were doing ‘on bike’ stuff – it was still very much traditional panniers and touring bags”.
And though the brand’s kit for gruelling tours and tough trails on two wheels retains its enviable reputation, increasingly it’s the bags and accessories for everyday life that are flying off the shelves. From their commuter-friendly backpacks and messenger bags to laptop sleeves and wallets, Restrap have got a solution. “If you want to carry stuff, then we’ll make something for you”, is Hughes’ simple way of putting it. With the passion and attention to detail that this Yorkshire brand put into every single product, we can’t imagine why you’d look anywhere else.
In fact, the brand is so confident in the quality of its products, and so proud of everything they build, that every bit of Restrap kit which comes out of the workshop is accompanied by a handmade card, personally signed by the machinist who made it. It’s a final flourish that sums up the Restrap ethos, and one that is increasingly rare in a world of global supply chains and outsourced production. But it’s good to know that in Yorkshire, they’re still doing things proper.
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