Our Quality

At Pantherella we have been making the worlds finest socks since 1937 right from here, our family-owned factory in Leicester, England. There are a few things that help make Pantherella stand out from the crowd, right from our signature fine linked toe seams, our archive of designs and ability to interpret new on trend styles season after season, our unparalleled quality and finally the luxurious yarns that we use to make our beautiful socks.
Pantherella have unrivalled quality standards - What are they?

We care about our socks. The fine English socks produced by Pantherella are synonymous with quality, design and style. Quality is a part of Pantherella’s DNA and a core feature of every sock we manufacture, no matter what style, fibre or shade/pattern.

The highest quality yarns we use are sourced from highly reputable European yarn suppliers.

Socks are knit on computerised knitting machines to very exact standards. The socks then pass through a number of critically and technically controlled processes before being individually examined and hand finished prior to packing and shipping.

The same care and attention is applied at the Pantherella Design and Development stage, so as to ensure that Pantherella Quality is built into every sock produced.

 



What standards do we adhere to?

All Pantherella & Scott Nichol socks exceed Internationally Recognised minimum requirements for such things as: Colour Bleed, Washing Shrinkage, Fibre “Bobbling” and “Wearing out”. In “Techno – Speak”, these are referred to as; Colour Fastness, Stability, Pilling and Abrasion.

New Designs and New Developments are also put through a rigorous ‘Real World’ Wearer Trial Program prior to any product being released for inclusion in any of our collections.

 



What tests do we carry out?

Sourced yarns a carefully checked for continuity of shade, to ensure each delivery of yarn is exactly the same shade as the last delivery. At knitting, no machine is allowed to produce a single sock without ensuring that any sock produced will meet our strict size tolerances. Every sock produced will be visually examined at least twice before reaching our final examination / hand finishing area, where once again, every sock is carefully examined to ensure there are no defects.

Socks are also randomly sampled from the hand finishing area and physically tested to ensure they meet our exacting standards. The Colour Fastness test used is an International test that reproduces the worst case scenario of a coloured sock being washed with a white sock. If excessive staining is ever identified, then the batch of socks are rejected, investigated and subsequently reprocessed.

The Stability test replicates the recommended Care Label wash (3 times) and measures how much a sock will Shrink or Grow. If a sock shrinks or grows excessively then the batch of socks are rejected, investigated and subsequently reprocessed.

The Pilling and Abrasion tests are carried out at the Design and Development stage of a sock’s life to ensure that the yarns used in a specific construction can take the day to day wear and tear of life in the real world. If any sock fails either of these tests, then the sock will be re-developed using a different yarn and/or a different construction. All of the tests are destructive, but only take about 1 day to complete, so we can be sure that results are timely and do not cause delays in getting socks to our customers.

 



How long do they take? What do they ensure? Who does our testing?

All of the physical testing that are carried out are done ‘In-house’ by trained staff in our custom built Quality Control Laboratory. However, we do use external, Internationally Accredited Testing Laboratories to carry out some specialist tests. These include; Due Diligence testing for the presence of European (REACh) and USA (TSCA) banned harmful substances and very exact Fibre Compositions, where we use multiple fibres in a sock design.

 

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