What we are about

  

Everything we do is about the quality of experience you get from us and your tent.  

  

 

 

All the tents are designed on the KISS principle, Keep It Simple Stupid and are engineered to last.

Albion Canvas is also a company that puts people first, chocolate second (or was that first Dee?), whether thats customers or staff.

 

Wherever possible we stick to our environmental ethos, purchasing locally and sustainably. For example we are working with a local felt maker to produce locally produced and manufactured felt for lining the yurts.

 

We recycle materials and packaging and have signed up with the charity Moor Trees to balance our carbon emissions through certified tree planting in and around Dartmoor. www.moortrees.org

 

All the tents are designed to give you a comfortable experience; the vast majority allow you to stand in them and have some form of heating.

 

Whenever I go camping I like to do it in style, sheepskin rugs, wood burning stove, properly laid out kitchen, Tilley and hurricane lamps, sofa, and my wind up gramophone and a selection of Jazz 78’s. Its not lightweight camping but its very comfortable and it’s a lot of fun!

 

At the end of the day I believe that a camping holiday should be just that – a holiday, not a form of uncomfortable accommodation that you put up with because it’s cheap.

 

Here are the leading hands on the good ship Albion Canvas

Alan - Albion Canvas Founder    

   Michaela and Wendy - its a hard life!

Wendy is the Office manager and guardian of the Albion portal!

Dee is our workshop supervisor.

Michaela, Jocelyn and Kay are our busy machinists.

Ian is our general assistant and pattern cutter.

30 June 2008 sadly Bryn is no longer with us, he will be greatly missed by all at Albion Canvas and by many of our regular customers.

 

  A Brief History of Albion Canvas

Albion Canvas started back in 1994 when I made my first Tipi which seems the usual way to start most businesses like this. I had been running a little kite making company in Exeter and travelling round the festivals in my old Leyland FG. Anyway I had tried to rebuild the engine and managed to blow a hole the size of my head in the main casing. So I had to go to the next event in my 1956 Standard Super 10 and with a nylon nightmare tent.

After spending the weekend struggling in and out of the micro tent I decided I needed a tent big enough to stand up in, so I bought some cheap canvas and made a Tipi. That was it, next thing I knew people were asking me to make them one, repair a deckchair canvas etc etc. Then an old travelling buddy Steve Place rang me up and said he had heard on the grapevine I was making canvas tents and would I like to make covers for his Yurts. “Yeah no problem” I said, “What’s a Yurt?”

I moved into a small house in Buckfastleigh Devon in 1995, and every time I wanted to make a tent, I’d pile the furniture in the corner of the living room, pull the machine out from under the stairs and get to work.

By ’97 I was renting a small space at a friend’s farm and every year business doubled until I got a bigger unit on a nearby business park in the spring of 2000.

Business continued to grow except for a hefty glitch in 2001 with the foot and mouth outbreak, but I managed to work through it, backing the income with some tree surgery work in the winter for a couple of years.

By the end of 2002 I had some occasional help from Diana (Dee), and friends. Several other workers came and went Laura, Alistair and Sarah amongst them. Dee came to be the full time workshop supervisor in late 2005, backed up by Elaine and Kay part time on the sewing machines. April 2006 brought Jane to join us as our first office staff and get us into some kind of order.

At the same time I moved the workshop from Unit 6 to Unit 8, which is twice the size, but with a leaky roof! And after only 6 months it was too small as well, had to buy some taller storage racks!

2008 saw us in our fourth workshop at Wrangaton. Its an ex-Navy victualing depot with huge sheds 100ft wide and 400ft long (recycling and reusing again!). We've only got a 45ft x 100ft bay I hasten to add! This space has already filled up with racking, sewing room, cutting tables, photo studio, proper offices and staff room and luxury of luxuries our very own indoor toilets!

The main floor just seems to rotate yurts at the moment, 19 already and its only March 31st 2008!

2009 is halfway through and we are as busy as ever despite the credit crunch. Looking to complete upstairs in the workshop soon, for some much needed storage space, but first we need some stairs!

                  What we do for the Environment

From the outset Albion Canvas has been run as an ethical and environmentally aware business.

Wherever possible we buy from local suppliers and manufacturers and support other small businesses.

We use recycled office products, paper card folders etc, and use a low waste solid ink printer for all our documents.

Although we have no control over our power supplier at the moment, it is intended that we switch to a sustainable provider as soon as possible.

All the timber we use is sourced from FSC certified suppliers, and as much as possible is UK grown.

All packaging is recycled and reused as much as possible, off cuts from the manufacturing process are also used in packaging.

Cleaning products are all environmentally sensitive products – mainly Ecover and similar products. Even our vacuum cleaner is a Henry – South West produced.

Tea and coffee etc are fair trade.

Cardboard tubes, thread and rope drums, fabric off cuts etc are recycled or passed on to the local scrap store, or manufactured into shopping bags. Even our plastic milk bottles, soup tins etc are cleaned, collected and recycled.

Felt used for yurt insulation is British wool and felted in the UK.

Customers are encouraged to repair before replacing – we offer a repair service.

Tent maintenance products we sell are produced to have minimum environmental impact.

All lighting equipment we sell is solar or ‘wind-up’ powered.

90% of electrical equipment (computers etc) is switched off at the end of the day not left on standby.

We are about to participate in a carbon offset scheme.

The majority of office and workshop furniture is purchased second-hand.

Even our forklift is a manual one – no gas or electric used.

We still only have a standard domestic sized bin emptied weekly, often not full.