Belfield products are one of the most familiar products in a caravan or motorhome because if you’re not sitting on them you’re sleeping on them.

A lot goes on at Belfield, with the group not only making soft furnishings for caravans and motorhomes but also items like sofas and curtains for high street brands. In this visit, Simon and Lee spoke to John, Commercial Director at Belfield Home & Leisure, and get an insight of their site at Ilkeston that specialises in soft furnishing for the leisure vehicle industry.

SIMON: In this site, you make purely soft furnishings for the leisure industry (caravans and motorhomes) but what other parts of the business are there?

JOHN: As a group we do soft furnishings for the high street (for brands like M&S, etc.). We do in the region of 11,000 seats and produce around 500 pairs of readymade curtains a week, as well as having a foam conversion company. This is the foam you see within your sofas, mattresses, etc. We can produce that ourselves as well.

SIMON: So you have quite a lot going on… It’s worth clarifying that when we say soft furnishing, effectively you make the cushions that we are sitting on, the bed mattresses, curtains, tack panels (like headboards in fixed beds) and you also make things like the optional bedding sets that we sell through PRIMA Leisure…

JOHN: Yes. Anything that has fabric within it, whether it is tacked on or wrapped around the foam, it is all produced by Belfield Leisure, and it’s all made here in Ilkeston, so everything is UK made.

LEE: To be honest, I didn’t even realise that you produced stuff for big high street giants, which must lead on nicely to producing high quality sets for caravans and motorhomes…

JOHN: It does, yes. They are very similar. The sofas you sit on have very similar construction, similar fabrics… to those at home. The fabrics are also the same, as well as the curtains. There is nothing that changes. The big consideration within the touring caravan is obviously the space and lightness of it.

SIMON: Weight must be a key factor… You don’t need to worry particularly about the weight of your sofa at home (unless you have a dodgy floor). But fundamentally, I guess that weight must really determine the type of design that you choose for caravan and motorhomes sets of soft furnishing.

JOHN: It is a key consideration, yes. The weight of these elements not only ensures you are kept within your chassis limits, but also, every single kilo that we can save does saves the customer in fuel when towing the caravan. All this forms part of the design considerations.

LEE: You referenced fabrics earlier on and fabric selection. This changes throughout fashion, decades, and with people’s taste. I am an owner of a 70’s caravan and, if I walk in, I almost need my sunglasses on because it is eye burning. How do you follow the fashion, taste and where we are now in general trends?

JOHN: Both design teams (Bailey and Belfield) look at the trends of what is going on in the high street. We are quite fortunate as we do a lot for the high street, so we know what the trends are at any given point. And working with Bailey, we build the schemes together.

LEE: We’ve talked about what is in the outside. But what is on the inside? Can you explain what goes into a caravan seat?

JOHN: Bailey seats have sprung construction. On the sleeping area of the seating, we ensure that there is sprung within. The sprung is encapsulated by the foam around it, which is of a very similar grade and density, so you don’t feel the lumps.

Things like backrests and backrests that aren’t used to sleep on, are made of a solid foam construction so it enables us to use slightly lighter weight foams that have exactly the same feel but gives you that weight saving benefit.

SIMON: So that would be for cushions that are not normally used for bed make up, while the base cushions would normally be sprung.

LEE: And I believe there are other considerations as well, like those related to safety. What rules and legislations do you need to follow to ensure your sets are suitable for a touring caravan?

PAUL: It is exactly the same as the domestic market. We have to follow the Furniture and Furnishings Safety Act. We have to ensure all fabrics and foams conform to those regulations, and that everything is labelled accordingly. We are inspected on a regular basis. Fabrics are checked to make sure they are passing the regulations and the same with the foam that is within.

LEE: Can you talk us through Aquaclean?

PAUL: Aquaclean is a fabric range that is used in the retail marketplace. It allows you to spill your everyday sort of liquids on it, tomato ketchup, crayons, … And it will come off. Each of the fabric fibres is wrapped with a little bit of detergent so when you use clean water to wash these things, it activates the detergents within the fabric, and it allows it to be cleaned.

LEE: I think we could have done with it for this trip…

SIMON: John, we have been working together for 20 years so we have a long-stablished relationship with between Belfield and Bailey. But I think there isn’t any doubt that, within the past two years we have both experienced two of the most significant challenges perhaps in the company’s history: Brexit and COVID. With Brexit, we knew it was coming, but how did it affect you as a business?

JOHN: A lot of the materials we use don’t just come from the UK. They come from further afield. A lot of the fabrics come from Europe. The biggest area of change was the paperwork involved into bringing the goods into the UK. This has extended the lead time slightly. So we had to ensure that our scheduling system would cope and remain strong to deal with those delays.

SIMON: And how did you cope with COVID?

JOHN: COVID was a whole new level. It came as a complete surprise to all. When we went into lockdown, it was a fairly straight forward process. As a group, we supported the NHS making gowns and facemasks. So some of the factories kept busy throughout that period.

Coming out of COVID, obviously different customers came back at different times, and then we had the supply chain challenges… So I would say the supply chain challenges are probably the biggest thing that we had to deal with, and are still dealing with.

SIMON: Moving forward, business sustainability is also very important. How are you looking at reducing the carbon footprint of your operations?

JOHN: As a group we have an ESG policy in place. So that’s the Environmental Social Governance. It is making sure that, as a company and as a group, we are making sure that the world is still here in the future and that is sustainable. That involves looking after the people that work with us, looking after the local area as well as ensuring we reduce the carbon footprint.

LEE: We’ve opened this interview on social media for the public to send their own questions. One of the questions we received was from someone that owned an older caravan that they have been taking on lots of sunny holidays. Because of that, the sun has bleached some of the cushions. Are new covers or cushions available?

JOHN: Yes. One of the services that we provide is through PRIMA Leisure. We keep fabrics for a period of time whilst they are still available, or we can find suitable alternatives. But yes, the service is there. We try to ensure that people can still get products once they come out of the Bailey production live.

LEE: Excellent. I will place an order for my 1977 Bailey Maestro while I’m here…

SIMON: Sorry Lee. I think that fabric has been banned. It’s not allowed to be used again.

END

Take a look at the gallery below to see images from our day at Belfield Home & Leisure. Hover over the information icon on each photo to read the caption.