A mattress company just spent £1m to make beds by hand again.

A mattress company just spent £1m to make beds by hand again.

Bensons for Beds is bringing back Staples & Co, a brand founded in 1895. Retail Gazette says the new mattresses are hand side-stitched and hand-tufted in Huntingdon, use wool from 50 to 60 British farmers who are paid a premium for their fleeces, and start at £1,399.99 for a double. The top one is £4,999.

Their brands director said they wanted it to feel like "a piece of furniture you would treasure for a lifetime".

I make plates for a living, so this made me smile. For years the big players won by making things faster and cheaper. Now one of them is paying to slow down.

That tells me something about where the money is. People don't want more stuff. They want fewer things with a story they can repeat at dinner.

Every chef I work with asks the same question first. Not "how much". It's "who made this, and how?"

If you make anything by hand, stop apologising for the price. Tell the story instead. Where the clay comes from. How long one bowl takes. What went wrong in the kiln last Tuesday.

That's not marketing. That's the product.