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knitting socks for the military. The brand hasn’t always been known as Bridgedale; that emerged around 1980, but socks have been the focus from day one. “Our history is our key USP; we have never made anything but socks, and we’ve done it for a long time. We’d like to think that this proves we’re pretty good at it. It is also all we do, our product is not an afterthought, it’s the sole thing we focus on,” said Ross Harben, International Sales Manager, when we sat down following the factory tour.
What’s in a sock? There is, it seems, more to socks than meets the eye. At least in Bridgedale’s case. They look like many other socks, but each one is meticulously designed, manufactured, and inspected before leaving the factory. The research and development area was not what I’d expected, but it all starts there, conducted by a team at Bridgedale, known as NPD. Amongst the prototypes and plastic feet were hundreds of boxes, each containing a ‘sock recipe’ of sorts, detailing everything from materials to what part of the machine it needed to connect to. Each sock is custom-knit according to specific programs, which can take hours to set up, depending on the sock and the number of yarns involved.
In one corner sat a Martindale Wear and Abrasion Tester, a machine to test durability by rubbing materials repeatedly until they wear through: “The record for a Bridgedale sock is over a million rubs, and it took weeks to complete. For comparison, the same machine is used to test fabrics used in domestic furniture, for example, sofas, and the standard for these materials is 30,000 rubs. “Once the design team are happy, they will share the design with the production team and the factory floor. The nice thing is, this team is just through another door,” said Ross. Knitting a Bridgedale sock involves numerous stages, including material preparation, precision knitting, and heat- setting. “Yarns are carefully chosen by our NPD team, who consider what they want from the sock, the characteristics and properties of each yarn and what this will offer the intended wearer. We engineer our own fibres in-house from stock yarns, using a process called FusionTech. This happens in the spinning room, the first stage of the production process,” he added. From here, things move onto the knitting room floor. The information (from the red boxes) and the chosen yarns are fed into a knitting machine, which automatically ‘builds’ each sock, starting with an internal nylon ‘skeleton’ similar to the foot from a pair of tights. This internal structure is what holds the sock together, gives it shape, and allows Bridgedale to add the other technical features, such as cushioning and elastication. The sock is woven from the cuff down before the final part of the knitting stage, called ‘closing the toe.’ This is carried out by a specific machine, which takes the sock from the main one,
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Top: Yarn today, sock tomorrow. Bottom left: The abrasion tester. Right: The ingredients for one sock recipe.
turns it inside out, closes the sock with a perfectly flat seam, then turns it the correct way round before ejecting the finished product. Stage three is a process called bulking. The socks are placed
in large machines, which are effectively massive industrial tumble dryers, to heat set them. This process causes the sock to shrink, and this shrinkage is carefully calculated during the design process, “It results in a sock in a specific size and significantly improves the sock’s final fit. It also increases the density of the knit, which affects the level of cushioning it offers. It also means our socks shouldn’t shrink when washed at home and ensures a perfect fit, use after use,” explained Ross. Finally, the socks are placed onto aluminium boards, pressed,
stacked, and sorted before being packed. At this stage, every single sock is examined, paired, and packed by hand before being boxed up for warehousing and distribution.
Stepping into Cycling Already well-established in the hiking market, 2023 saw Bridgedale launch its off-road cycling range. Development was a complex process that involved working with riders to gather design input. “We went out and actively found a variety of people who rode different distances from
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