Should we stay or should we go?

We were going to call this piece “To Brexit or not to Brexit, that is the question” and paraphrase Shakespeare. But to be honest, we’re more Clash than RSC.

If you’re anything like us the whole EU Referendum Campaign has in turns disappointed, amused us and frustrated us. Will a vote to leave result in World War III? Will a vote to stay mean that we become part of a dicatorship super state? Both of these possibilities have been fed to us over the past weeks. Mmmm… perhaps Messrs Cameron and Johnson may want to ask themselves if these were their finest hours.

The upcoming EU Referendum on the 23rd June has made us think about our business specifically and how an exit from the EU would affect us.

One of the areas we looked at was where does the £ that you spend with us actually go?

If you know anything at all about Craven & Co you will know how proud we are of our great British manufacturing heritage, and we like as many people as possible to know about it.

If you have only just discovered us a little surf round our site will soon give you the same impression. I guess in a perfect world we would like to see that all of our suppliers were based here in the UK. But the truth of the matter is they’re not, and we understand that we operate in a Global Market.

Let’s cut to the chase, here’s where the money that you pay us for our products go –

5.75p in the £ is paid directly to an EU supplier
5.48p in the £ is paid directly to an Asian supplier
88.77p in the £ stops in the UK

We can live with that, nearly 90p in every £ that we turnover is reinvested in this country through the salaries paid to our suppliers’ staff, the taxes they pay, the taxes that our Suppliers pay all contribute to our Country’s wealth and cash flow, our defence, our hospitals and our emergency services.

The next time you look to choose an imported product over one of our products you may want to think of these things.

So, should we stay or should we go?

We like the traits traditions of this country. We don’t like being told what to do so, you’ll know how best to vote. Irrespective of the vote, we’ll still be here doing what we’ve been doing for 60 years, manufacturing great British products here in Great Britain.