How Crockett & Jones Rose from Northampton to Global
Charles Jones and Sir James Crockett founded their shoemaking partnership in Northampton in 1879, joining a town that had been the centre of English shoemaking since the English Civil War, when Cromwell's New Model Army ordered thousands of boots from Northampton's craftsmen. Unlike some competitors who pursued rapid industrial expansion, Crockett & Jones grew methodically, prioritising construction quality over production volume.
The company remained a wholesale supplier to other brands for its first century of operation — a silent partner whose shoes wore other names on their insoles. This changed in the 1990s when third-generation family member Jonathan Jones initiated a transition to branded retail, opening the first Crockett & Jones shop on Jermyn Street in London in 1990.
Crockett & Jones shoes are made using Goodyear welted construction, a process requiring over two hundred individual operations per pair. The Goodyear welt stitches the upper to a strip of leather running along the shoe's perimeter, to which the sole is then stitched separately. This construction allows multiple resolings over a shoe's lifetime, typically extending service to twenty or thirty years with proper care.
The James Bond franchise provided Crockett & Jones with its most significant cultural endorsement. Costume designer Jany Temime selected the Highbury model for Daniel Craig in Skyfall in 2012, and the partnership continued through Spectre and No Time to Die. The Bond association introduced the brand to millions of filmgoers who had never heard of Northampton shoemaking (https://www.crockettandjones.com).
The company's range spans from formal Oxfords and monk straps to casual boots and loafers, produced on over sixty proprietary lasts. The Hand Grade collection, representing the highest tier of factory production, uses hand-clicked leather selection, hand-stained finishing, and single-leather soles cut from oak-bark tanned butts — a process that takes over twelve months per hide.
Fifth-generation family members now manage the company, maintaining the Northampton factory as the sole production facility. Over three hundred and fifty craftspeople produce approximately five thousand pairs per week, each pair passing through eight departments and requiring approximately eight weeks from cutting to completion.
Crockett & Jones rose from Northampton to global recognition by applying a simple strategy consistently over one hundred and forty-five years: make the best shoes possible at each price point, invest in the quality of construction rather than the quantity of marketing, and trust that excellence eventually finds its audience. The James Bond films merely accelerated a recognition that the product had already earned.
