If you’re in the market for genuine Irish linen tea towels you’ll find yourself looking longer and harder than ever before
Forget brands like ‘Ulster Weavers’ whose name implies that it is Irish linen and is found in places like Fortnum & Mason and carries the Royal Warrant, but in fact no longer seems to be Irish linen
No, these days you have to dig deep to find the genuine article
And so it came to pass, thanks to Google, that i found these guys;
You can find them online here; http://thelinencupboardlondon.com
And this is where the story becomes interesting, in relative terms at least; shortly after placing my order I receive a call from the proprietor who is now in his mid 70’s and we get talking and he starts telling me how his sons have persuaded him to take the business online and how he is struggling with the concept.
This is a guy who has clearly built up an established clientele over more than 40 years and has forgotten more about his trade than his competitors have ever learnt most likely. He likes to do things the way that has served him so well – face to face contact, or at worst, a telephone. You could tell fairly quickly that the guy was far from convinced about taking the business online, but I couldn’t help think how both the old guy and his sons were both correct.
The founding father was correct in his importance of the need for personal service – he noticed that i had ordered a king sized fitted sheet, but a super king sized top sheet & assumed i had made a mistake. I hadn’t – it was down to the slightly unusual width of our bed, but that doesn’t matter, the personal concern and attention to detail was impressive. In the end he put me down for a special order fitted sheet for a deeper mattress that wasn’t shown on their website.
If I’m honest i had some reservations that the goods were going to be of the quality i was looking for, as the prices are most reasonable as evidenced here;
Yes that’s right, GBP6.50 plus tax for a genuine Irish linen tea towel that lasts for years
And as you can see i needn’t have worried, it is the genuine article;
And after washing you can see clearly that the weave has tightened up and its ready to be pressed into years & years of hard service:
Personally I absolutely loved the pairing of the online presence with the genuine old school levels of personal service, the hand stamped envelope, and the hand written invoice. The goods are of the absolute highest quality – the quality of the cotton sheets is superb but i won’t bore you further with the details, other than to say I really think there is a bright future ahead for very long established businesses, selling high quality traditional goods, to get online so they can achieve the necessary sales volumes to ensure their continued prosperity as the demand for goods of a genuinely high quality becomes increasingly niche