Artisanal Businesses in Britain

Amazon Handmade – a store for handcrafted personalised products, supporting local artisans – has commissioned Metro Dynamics to develop this report to understand the scale and economic contribution of artisanal communities across Great Britain.

The report identifies Birmingham, Edinburgh, and London as Great British craft hotspots; the West Midlands saw more growth during the pandemic year than any other region in the UK, Edinburgh was found to be the home of Scotland’s most artisans with the country experiencing 14% growth over the past decade, and London hosts the highest number of artisans across Britain.

Great Britain saw the biggest increase of new handmade artisans in a decade last year, over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, with a 33% increase in self-employed crafters recorded between 2019 and 2020 alone. This growth contributed to an overall rise of 21% more makers setting up a handmade business over the last ten years.

The report also highlights that sub-regionally specialisms, based on location quotient analysis, build on historic context strengths such as Leicestershire’s specialism for Clothes, Shoes and Accessories, or Birmingham’s specialism in Jewellery.

Read the full report here.