‘You can’t bring in robots’: the leather firm handmaking everything from wallets to cigar cases

News summary

Gary Billingham demonstrates how a small team cuts 28 components for an Ettinger wallet from leather using a hydraulic press at a factory in Walsall.

Chief executive Robert Ettinger notes that the vast majority of the manufacturing workflow must be completed by hand rather than with robots.

The British brand was established in 1934 by Robert Ettinger's father, who fled Nazi Germany and later acquired a factory in Clerkenwell before relocating to Walsall in the 1990s.