Archibald London - a luxury retailer that understands WHAT it really takes to reach Customer Excellence.
“Transparency is easy when you’ve nothing to lose; it’s every bit as necessary when there’s so much on the line.”
FROM: Archibald London
DATE: 11 Mar 2021, 17:30
TO: Morten Sørensen
SUBJECT: An important announcement
Dear Community member,
We hope you’re well. We have some news, that is critical for our brand but at the same time, we know this isn’t the world of yesterday. We all have much greater issues to deal with everyday and far bigger concerns to prioritise. Nevertheless, we felt a duty to inform you of some significant and unexpected changes, so I hope you will bear with us as we do. Know that our urgency and concern about Archibald, does not reflect an indifference on our part to the precarity in the world beyond it.
We received some news recently that affects the very foundations of our brand. It still feels surreal to be saying this, but our shock is of lesser importance than our need to update all of you. Some recent batches of our hand-welted shoes have been made using a new method of construction. We were not aware that one of our shoemakers had changed his technique. He did not inform us before doing so, nor at any other time until now. Archibald London has a history of transparency, and a commitment to delivering products of exceptional quality, for little profit, and with fair pricing. Transparency was not a watchword for us, it was our actual proof. We lifted the curtain on how a product is made, how much production costs, who the artisans are, how much we charge compared to the market, and how much of a profit we take.
Thus we take this news very seriously because it cuts right to the heart of who we are. And in keeping with our ethos, we will outline what had happened. On the 5th March 2021, a customer deconstructed the hand-welted shoes he had purchased from Archibald. The customer, who we shall refer to as JMR928, realised that the product has not been made as our marketing described and contacted us to share his discovery. We are incredibly grateful to JMR928, who has generously lent us his insight, time and kindness, to assist us in getting to the bottom of this matter and granted us the opportunity to steer things back on track.
This was news to us. We have trusted our artisans and their commitment to craftsmanship. We were not aware that the construction had changed. This new technique did not match up with what our content, from our videos to our values, had led the customer to expect. The shoe was reconstructed without our knowledge or consent. We had been paying this shoemaker for a particular service, the traditional and lasting welting technique necessary to meet the exacting standards of a hand-welted shoe. And without a word, they had changed their practice, sold us something we did not ask for, charged us for something we had not consented to purchasing, and kept us in the dark. We immediately contacted the artisan in question to find out what had happened, when and why.
It transpired that during the pandemic, in the middle of 2020, this shoemaker decided to apply the shoemaking technique he has been using for years for some other Italian brands, one he feels makes the shoe more comfortable, onto our line of hand-welted shoes. He insists the change was made out of good faith but that is beside the point. He produced shoes using that practice, without telling us about this change. We have conducted an investigation into this construction technique. It is currently still ongoing and we have gone through our databases to assess our customers’ feedback over that time period and will continue to analyse the results. We receive regular and fulsome feedback about our artisans work, in general. The purchases from the time period, when the shoemaker, in question, changed the construct of the shoe, received the same level of feedback. It was just as positive. At his very best, this shoemaker’s work is incomparable. In all our years of building Archibald, we’ve yet to find a high luxury brand capable of surpassing our hand-welted shoe. But, awkward though it is to admit, we cannot formally vouch for this new technique, not yet. It is the method used for one of the most well-regarded Italian heritage shoe brands and we are told he made the change in good faith. But we are still assessing the mechanics of this construction. Either way, this is not really the point. To be frank, his actions were duplicitous. Some might even use a harsher term. It is not what we promised the customer, it is not what they expected to receive, and it is not in line with our broader approach, which was to maintain standards of traditional craft, honed over decades of time to deliver products that are enduring. It is not even what we expected to receive.
It has been difficult for us to process. We are a small team. Our artisans are our family. We have known most of them for over five years, we launched the Naked campaign last year to give them our support. Archibald is not simply a business for us and so to have even one of our shoemakers, one of our craftsmen, keep us in the dark, has felt like a personal betrayal. There’s also the domino effect. For through his misconduct towards us, our customers were then misled. Archibald arose as a response to false advertising, a rejection of a retail culture compelling us to consume, so it really pains us to have been part of a practice we so abhor. Everyone is flawed, but we strove, as a business, to avoid the model of selling dishonesty. We’re struggling with how to process this because customers now own shoes they thought embodied one approach to construction but are something else altogether. Your trust is something we take seriously, our reputation one we built carefully, over several years. During the pandemic, we knew with Naked we would incur heavy financial losses and we would have to absorb those throughout the year. With that in mind, knowing that even one batch of our at-cost products did not even contain the craftsmanship we sought to highlight… It is difficult to articulate what that means for us. It is difficult to process how we meaningfully address this with those of you who purchased them. We knew we had to tell you as quickly as we could. Transparency is easy when you’ve nothing to lose; it’s every bit as necessary when there’s so much on the line. So we are here, as we should be, bringing candour and doing it quickly. But that doesn’t mean it is not hard for us to endure, or overcome.
Archibald has always been about people, about the shoemakers as much as the shoes. And we know that 2020 was not a usual year. And whilst we all faced precarity in one way or another, some people responded to it differently to others. Within our community of shoemakers, whilst many faced hardship, only one violated our trust, in their search for a solution. We do not say that lightly. Their violation of trust was a violation of the law. But we have to also accept that we were rather naive. We trusted our shoemakers, all of our artisans, and whilst this shoemaker and these shoes are proving to be the anomaly, the reality is, we should have adapted to the changing situations. We should have kept a closer eye on the manufacturing, during that time. We will be discussing the issue with our craftsman and deciding on how best to proceed. We will also be following up with you all individually if we have identified you as having one of these products in your possession. With the lockdowns and travel restrictions, we are not able to address this quite as quickly as we would like. We ask for your patience as we continue forward. We want to work with you and find a solution to this together. We are currently going through all the other product categories. So far everything is fine and consistent with our brand and production ethos, but we will obviously keep everyone informed if we discover additional changes have been made.
This is not the final thing we have to say on this. It’s actually closer to the first. With regards to the shoemaker in question, how we proceed has to be guided by our values. We believe in transparency, in masterful craftsmanship, and we care about our community. About the people who purchase, and those who produce, the Archibald London brand. We all make errors in judgment and it is easy to condemn. But in an era of global collapse, as people fought to stay afloat, and to stay alive, many will have felt a need to compromise. It would be easy to point the finger and cut ties with the supplier. We live in an age of cancel culture. But at Archibald, we seek a considerate one. We cannot just champion human excellence; we must show compassion for human error. In short, we cannot recognise humanity only as long as it serves us. Now to forgive is not to forget, nor to downplay this substantial misstep. But we cannot reduce people to their utility. We remain a community of people and people make mistakes. We intend to treat this as a learning opportunity and we hope to earn back your trust, as we explore how to make amends, and bring a new level of oversight into a new Archibald era.
We hope to bring you with us.
The Team at Archibald www.archibaldlondon.com
