From our humble beginnings, Rab® and Lowe Alpine® have grown to be global brands at the forefront of technical outdoor gear.
Our workforce has expanded alongside this, with our direct employees being based across the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Canada, the USA, China and Vietnam. True to our founders exacting standards, we obsess about the quality and performance of our kit and take great care in choosing who makes it.
UK Manufacture
We’re proud to retain manufacturing expertise in our UK HQ, in Derbyshire. This is where our expert team hand-fill every single down sleeping bag and cut and stitch all our expedition garments. Working alongside them in our Service Centre are an expert team who carry out repairs on battered clothing, getting it ready for your next adventure.
Global Production
We work with 21 manufacturers across Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, and Vietnam who cut, make, and trim our products.
We believe that developing long-term relationships with our manufacturing partners is important. It ensures quality and consistency of our products, but also stability for the communities we operate within.
We care about every single person in our supply chain. Over 19,000 people are employed by our manufacturers globally. Working closely with our partners, we support them in ensuring all workers are treated fairly. That they have freedom to choose employment, are not discriminated against, earn a living wage, and have safe and fair employment terms. All our factories are audited against the amfori BSCI Code of Conduct as well as the Code of Labour Practices outlined by the Fair Wear Foundation. Fair Wear checks our progress in promoting fair and safe working conditions annually.
You can find a link to our UK Modern Slavery Statement, here.
From our humble beginnings, Rab® and Lowe Alpine® have grown to be global brands at the forefront of technical outdoor gear. Our workforce has expanded alongside this, with our direct employees being based across the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Canada, the USA, China and Vietnam.True to our founders exacting standards, we obsess about the quality and performance of our kit and take great care in choosing who makes it.
Our global footprint stretches across Asia; covering countries including Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. We are proud to also retain manufacturing expertise at our factory in Derbyshire, UK where we still hand-fill our down insulated sleeping bags.
Our supply chain has grown across the years, as has the priority we place on our relationships. Regardless of where we operate, we demand the same quality and standards, and expect all our employees and partners to have safe working conditions, be treated fairly and with respect. Our relationships allow us to ensure that employees can be paid a fair wage –we seek efficiencies where they make sense, but we do not demand meagre savings, which could affect the ability for the factory to pay its staff well. It makes sense for us to have a rewarded, sustainable workforce, that understand our products and are committed to their jobs. We believe that long term partnerships helps facilitate this.
“It makes sense for us to have a rewarded, sustainable workforce, that understand our products and are committed to their jobs.”
While we recognise that manufacturing overseas can introduce more risk in some countries, continuing to develop the skills, expertise and standards in overseas facilities is something which we take very seriously. To remove our business for these communities would severely impact the economic viability of the area and open the workers up to exploitation by organisations with lower standards and less regulation in place than ourselves. We are proud to create jobs in countries that are seeking to upskill their workforce and that want to increase wages and living conditions for the population.
All our facilities are regularly checked to ensure they have relevant health and safety, environment and social audits carried out by a third party that meet the local standards as an absolute minimum. All our manufacturing sites are also visited multiple times each year by our own employees. We speak with our key supply chain partners almost daily. It is very much a close partnership.
Each of our strategic supplier partners has received and adheres to our supplier manual covering key social, ethical, labour standards and health and safety issues. Included within our supplier manual is a clear mandate to eradicate any unauthorised sub-contracting. We work hard to ensure these standards are maintained and to maximise transparency across our operation across our full supply chain.