Wu and Wu's homecoming hopes start to fray In little more than six months since it made the change, textiles have grown from just 5pc to 30pc of its sales, with the remainder made up of illustrated retro tin gift sets, which are still produced in China. Most of its sales - around 90pc - are exports, with Holland and France being the strongest of the 18 markets it sells to. So why isn't Wu and Wu becoming the made-in-Britain success story Tainton wants it to be? Fiona can design something, take it to the workshop and we can have a product on our website to sell to wholesalers in an hour. It should be perfect - but I can't make the numbers work," he says. While the company expects to make a healthy pre-tax profit of around £110,000 from turnover of £900,000 this year, Tainton is having to turn business away from large stores in Scandinavia and the United States because of his lack of confidence that he'd be able to supply them on time. The increased demand should be great news but I feel negative about it because I can't get the products out quickly enough. Since both Tainton and Hewitt spent demoralising periods on the dole before they met in Hong Kong and founded a business on a shared love of Asian kitsch designs, they decided to try to hire unemployed graduates as UK production staff for Wu and Wu. With no shortage of out-of-work young people in the area who had studied textile design or production, and more than 100 responses to its first job advert, the couple thought they'd hit upon a winning idea. A few months on, and Tainton cuts a frustrated figure: his experience of trying to manage a UK manufacturing base has been characterised by inefficiency, high levels of absenteeism and a skills shortage. Most young people in Brighton have degrees, but they often lack the life skills even to get to work on time. He's been most shocked, however, by departing staff who have told him they regard unemployment as a lifestyle choice. "We've had lots who have just quit because they said they prefer to be on the dole and housing benefit," he says. I hate the waste. I felt sick with stress the whole time I was on the dole. I've found not everyone shares that view. He's also found managing the output of those who are willing to work a tricky proposition. According to a consultant friend of Tainton's who conducted a study of Wu and Wu's printing and sewing operation, the company should be able to produce 860 units a week in Brighton, which would result in a healthy weekly profit which could be reinvested in the tin business, where cash flow is an obstacle to growth. The company's actual production "fluctuates wildly," but the 41 year-old estimates the average is around 500 units a week - and the problem is "purely efficiency," he insists. The management of the labour is what manufacturing really is and I hadn't realised that. Now we wake up in the morning and worry if the staff are going to come in or not. If one of our sewers is off, we'll be short on a week's production. It's put me off going down the manufacturing-in-the-UK route - I had wanted to bring more back. I'd pay more to do it all here - cash flow is what I care about, not profit. The company starts its sewers on £8 an hour - hardly a king's ransom but almost £2 above the minimum wage for those older than 21 - so attracting and training retail workers could be an alternative, but Tainton suspects the company's location isn't helping. People tell me I'm an idiot for trying to do it in Brighton, that I should move it to the Midlands where there was an established industry, so I'll find industrial speed sewers. Scale could be another issue, if the owner of a larger textile factory in Swindon is to be believed. He has 25 staff, and told me that's the minimum, that you need everyone [paid per piece], and should allow for four people to be off every single day. He told me it took him 15 years to make it work and that I never would at this size. Tainton is now caught between growing the production operation in Brighton, moving it to an area with a more established textiles skills base or simply outsourcing sewing to UK suppliers. I hope I can fix it. I'm a bit inert because I haven't decided how to go about it. Should we cut down the staff levels so that we are only printing the textiles in-house and then outsource the sewing to a larger sewing factory where they can control their staff output better than we can? Or should we try to find funding to move to larger premises and pay sewing staff per piece?" he asks. The demand is enormous, we've got great export markets and lots of our contemporaries have asked us if we could fulfil orders from them - but we simply don't have enough capacity. If I could nail it, my word we'd be off.