Ali Aydan says; What Exactly Is British About It?
A buyer asked me that at a trade counter early on. He’d picked up one of our boxes, looked at the flag on it, and asked the one question the flag couldn’t answer.
My reply was thinner than I’d have liked. He nodded politely and put the box down.
I’ve thought about that moment more than almost any sale we’ve won since. The goodwill behind origin is real. A recent YouGov survey for the trade body Made in Britain found 70% of UK adults are more likely to buy a product carrying a clear British-made mark. But a mark only tells the buyer where something is from. It doesn’t tell them what that’s worth.
The buyer who prefers British-made is really hoping for something. Accountability. Quality. Service they can actually reach. Standards they can trust. The flag gestures at all of it and delivers none of it. Delivery is the company’s job.
So we gave the word a job to do. Standards our products are built and tested to. Service based here and answerable here. Names drawn from this country’s architecture rather than a parts catalogue. Once the answer became specific, buyers started repeating it back to us, in meetings we weren’t even part of.
There’s a harder edge too. Almost every modern product crosses borders somewhere. The brands that last say plainly what’s British and what isn’t. Candour doesn’t weaken an origin claim. It’s what makes one believable.
This piece closes my Beyond the Spec Sheet series for Forbes Business Development Council, following earlier pieces on why most security companies have products but no brand, and why product names should mean something.
The flag is free. That’s exactly why the market stopped paying for it.
Read it here: https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesbusinessdevelopmentcouncil/2026/09/18/beyond-the-spec-sheet-product-origin-claims-only-have-the-meaning-you-give-them/
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