Vegan shoe firm turns its skills to sporrans

Nov 10 2008 by Karen Dent, The Journal

A COUPLE who have produced shoes for the vegan market for 10 years have branched out into making sporrans.

Like the shoes produced by Freerangers at its workshop in Chopwell, the traditional Scottish kilt accessories are completely free from any animal products.

Brian Woodward, who runs the business with his wife Jill, said that the production of sporrans started by accident rather than design.

“We were asked by the then president of the Vegan Society to look at making him a sporran. Someone else saw it and asked for one and it went from there, so we put it in our catalogue. Now we are about to set up a separate website,” he said.

“It is simply a development of the shoe range. I think it would be difficult to launch it on its own. We are hoping to capture the market – there is not much competition in completely vegan products like sporrans.

“We assumed someone else already did one but we were surprised, it’s one of those markets that has created itself rather than one we went looking for. The new website is us going looking for it.”

In order to meet the strict demands of the Vegan Society, the sporrans cannot contain any animal products or by products, so use of items like silk, lanolin and beeswax is out.

“The artificial fur on the dress sporran was very hard to get hold of for that quality,” said Mr Woodward.

Most of the sporrans, which are handmade to order, are manufactured from a leather-like material called lorica which is also used for the range of shoes and accessories produced by Freerangers.

Mr and Mrs Woodward, who run the business without any other staff, also sell homeopathic skin care and bath lotions via their catalogue and website.