From the King’s Road to Shropshire.

Our story began long before our name was on anything. In 1970s London, Chris’ father Bill made a belt for Ann. When she wore it along the King’s Road, people stopped to photograph her and shopkeepers asked where she had found it.

“My husband made it,” she told them. The orders began, and their living room became Bill’s first workshop.

Craft runs in the family. Bill’s father was a stonemason who built the house where Bill grew up, beside a quarry in Aberdeenshire. Bill learned leatherwork from a couture belt maker and later took over his workshop. Ann left her job to sell the belts, and their company officially began in 1974. Its customers included Harrods, John Lewis and other familiar names in British retail.

Chris spent school holidays in his father’s factory, surrounded by leather, machinery and skilled hands. He was learning what good making looked like long before he imagined a business of his own.

In 2008, after university, Chris began selling his father’s belts at Covent Garden Apple Market. I had recently lost my job. My background was in music, marketing and events, and I began joining him.

Our first workshop was Bill’s garage in Shropshire, using the machinery he had kept. We worked with traditional leatherworking techniques, shaping and finishing each belt by hand. In winter, we worked in approximately every jumper we owned.

We made belts for Bill and Ann to take to craft fairs, with a little corner of their stand for our own designs. That corner became Mackenzie & George.

Mackenzie is Ann’s family name, and George is Chris’ middle name. Both come from Chris’ family, and carry a little of their Scottish roots into what we make today.

I’m Melanie, but I’m called Mackenzie so often that I’ve adopted it as my middle name.

Inspired by everything Bill and Ann had built, we officially launched Mackenzie & George as our own venture in 2012. Our first event was Burghley Horse Trials. Meeting our customers and hearing your feedback has spurred us on ever since.

Some shows have been more comfortable than others. At one Badminton Horse Trials, we’d been working all hours, sometimes 10 to 18 hours a day, getting stock ready.

We were excited to have swapped a tent for a mattress in the van, and were looking forward to a bit of living space at the show with a new inflatable awning.

Then the awning burst just as we finished setting up the stand… It was definitely a low point, when I wondered if we were doing the right thing.

We now have a large workshop in Shropshire (with heating!), a small, dedicated team of leatherworkers, and our customers at the heart of everything we create. Your feedback helps us refine our designs and shape what comes next.

From the beginning, we wanted to offer interesting jobs in an area of high unemployment, giving people livelihoods and skills in our community. Our team matters to us. We still test new ideas against the values we started with: honesty, quality, timeless design and care in the making.

We make our leather goods ourselves, using materials from tanneries and casters Chris has known all his life. They supply the materials; our workshop team makes the finished pieces.

We choose materials including full-grain vegetable-tanned leather and solid brass. On our belts, edges are carefully shaped, buffed by hand, inked and sealed. Details you may hardly notice can make a difference to how something feels and wears.

Our original wish was to make classic belts that could be cherished and eventually handed down. That still guides us. We believe true style should be timeless, and that if something is made properly, it should be made to last.

Wear them. Let them soften and gather character. They are made to be used, not saved for best. We stand behind our work with our Built to Last Guarantee, and with care and repairs long after a piece leaves the workshop.

We’re proud of what we’ve built together, and grateful to everyone who has bought a piece, stopped at our stand or trusted us to make something special.