Personalisation

A named bag comes home again. Around a third of everything we send out is personalised, and almost all of it for the same practical reason: a school cloakroom in October contains forty identical black backpacks. Embroidery solves that permanently, in a way a luggage tag or a laundry marker does not.

The three options

Option	Maximum length	Typical use	Price
Embroidered initials	3 characters	Discreet. Usually chosen for secondary and sixth form bags.	£4.50
Embroidered name	14 characters	The standard choice for primary. First name only, or first name and surname initial.	£4.50
Name and school year	20 characters	For schools that ask for a class or year on the bag.	£4.50

Spaces, full stops, apostrophes and hyphens all count as characters. The text is embroidered exactly as you type it, including capitalisation — so a. j. wells comes back as a. j. wells. Please check it before you order.

Thread colours

Six colours, all colourfast polyester thread, all the same price:

• White
• Black
• Gold
• Teal
• Red
• Navy

As a guide: white and gold read clearly on the darker fabrics, black and navy on lighter ones, and teal is our house colour if you would like the bag to match our branding. If you are unsure, order white — it is the most legible across the widest range of bags and the least likely to look wrong under fluorescent cloakroom lighting.

Where it goes on the bag

The default position is the front panel, centred, roughly a third of the way up from the base — high enough to be visible when the bag is on a peg, low enough not to be covered by a compression strap. On satchels the default is the flap, lower right. On sports bags it is the end panel next to the zip.

If you need it somewhere else — a school requires it on the lid, or you want initials on a side pocket — write the position in the "Notes for our team" box on the product page and we will confirm it by email before the order goes ahead.

How it works

• You type the text at the point of ordering

  Choose the option, type the text, choose a thread colour. The £4.50 is added to the item price in your basket, once per bag.

• We check it before anything happens

  The text is set out at the size that suits the panel. If anything looks wrong — a typo we can see, a name too long for the panel, a colour that will not read on that fabric — we email you before the order goes any further.

• The embroidery is added to the finished bag

  It is worked onto the completed bag with a stabiliser behind the panel, so the stitching does not pucker the fabric or compromise the water-repellent finish. The bag itself is not altered in any other way.

• It is checked, packed and dispatched on the normal schedule

  Personalisation adds no extra dispatch time. An order placed before 13:00 on a working day still leaves the same day, personalised or not.

What cannot be embroidered

• Logos, crests, badges or any third-party trade mark — including school crests, unless the order comes from the school itself with written authority.
• Text we consider offensive, or which impersonates an organisation.
• Emoji, symbols outside the standard Latin character set, or non-Latin scripts.
• More characters than the option allows. If the name genuinely does not fit, email us and we will suggest an abbreviation that does.

School and bulk orders

We supply personalised bags to schools, clubs and teams. Send us the model, the quantity and a list of names in a spreadsheet, and we will confirm lead time and pricing. Orders of ten or more personalised bags are quoted individually because the setup cost is shared across the batch. Use the "School or bulk order" option on our contact form.

Care of an embroidered bag

Embroidery needs no special treatment. Thread is colourfast polyester and will not run at 30°C. The one thing to avoid is ironing directly onto the stitching, which flattens and glazes it — and none of the bags in the range should be ironed anyway. Full instructions on our product care page.