HOW BRIDGEDALES ARE MADE

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1 Design

Each Bridgedale is designed by Stephen Connor’s NPD department. A new style – like the recently launched range for trail runners – can go through three years of testing and iteration. Taste in socks is getting brighter says Stephen; and of his 30-year quest for perfection: ‘The job is never done’.

6 Bulking

Batches of new socks go into a machine which uses steam to preshrink the sock to its proper fit. Socks go in long and loose and come out (in the firm’s parlance) ‘tight’. The type of Nylon Bridgedale uses (6/6) shrinks only once to achieve its permanent size.

2 Bill of materials

Up to 17 different yarns go into each sock – and the precise weights and costs of each fibre must be strictly calculated. Once a design is finalised, its details, and a master sock, are stored in a reference folder to ensure consistency can always be checked, tens of thousands of socks later.

7 Boarding

After bulking, every sock is hand-sleeved over metal boards and taken into an automatic steamer and presser. Elsie Ritchie’s been boarding socks for 15 years. ‘I couldn’t stand up all day like this without my Bridgedales,’ she says; ‘I feel proud to work here’.

3 Yarn checks

Yarns come from all over Europe and must be checked for colour, elasticity and something called ‘crimp rigidity’. Periodically a complete sock is tested on a Martindale abrasion tester, simulating a week of wear in a fraction of the time. ‘We had to stop the last test at 500,000 cycles. It just wasn’t wearing,’ says Stephen.

8 Inspecting

The freshly-pressed socks are next examined and paired – all by hand. Inspectors like Nadine examine every sock’s fabric and knitting for flaws. Each examiner checks at least 1800 socks per shift. Rejected socks are sold as seconds or donated.

4 Winding

For its signature Fusion fibres Bridgedale twists Merino wool and synthetic nylon yarns together before the knitting – a process performed by an unresting set of Agtek winding machines. The combination allows designs with hybrid properties for different parts of different socks.

9 Packing

After inspecting, packing – again all done manually, a pair at a time. The packaging too is made in Belfast. Packer Julianna Szepvolgyi has worked here eight months: ‘There’s no pressure, everyone is kind. I can’t say enough good things about it,’ she says.

5 Knitting

These Italian knitting machines operate 6am to 10pm; 17 to a person. A 112-needle machine knits a sock (cuff to toe) in three minutes. Bridgedale mechanics’ tweaks to feeders, needles, butts, jacks, cams, and sinkers allow the machines to ‘Do things it wasn’t designed to and no one has been able to replicate’.

10 Boxing & dispatch

54-72 pairs fill a box depending on the sock style. Each filled box is then fed through a metal detector on the remote chance a needle part has found its way in. Thirty boxes fill a pallet, and are then wrapped and ready for the warehouse.