Ironmongery Blog

We couldn’t believe our eyes this morning.

Having a snoop around one of our competitors web sites we noticed what can only be described as totally false & misleading claims as to the country of origin of many of the items in one of their product ranges.

The web site concerned is www.handles4doors.co.uk and the range in question is Prima Antique Brass.

Now, we have nothing against them promoting this range with the use of phrases such as “unique antique finish” (although we would have to ask in what way is it unique) and “skilled finishing process”, and we don’t even mind if they use words like “quality” (remember, though, that you can’t make a sows purse from a pigs ear). We could, indeed, sell exactly the same products from exactly the same source if we wanted to (which we don’t because we value our reputation for supplying quality products).

What we object to in the strongest possible terms is the use of the phrase “British Made” which seems to have been used with gay abandon in many of the product descriptions.

The vast majority of this product range is, in fact, manufactured to dubious quality standards in India (except for a couple of exceptions which are made in Europe). They are shipped to the UK in their normal brass laqcuered finish (which isn’t highly polished despite other claims on the same web site) and are then sent away to be de-lacquered, re-finished and then re-lacquered. Whilst we know that the re-finishing is indeed carried out in the UK, we do not see how the products can then be described as “British Made”.

We have emailed the company concerened asking them to confirm the country of origin of this product range - to date we have not yet received a response.