Where Christmas jumpers are made: Discover Santa's very own workshop in Leicester

Love them or loathe them, Christmas jumpers are undoubtedly a trend that keeps coming back every festive season, growing in popularity year on year.

Hundreds of thousands of festive knits are made at factories across the UK every year.

Jack Masters' jumper factory in Leicester has been making knitwear in the city since 1987 and in 2010 the firm spotted a gap in the market and branched into making seasonal sweaters too.

They’ve been so popular that they now make up around 20% of all their production. They estimate to have made around £250,000 over the past 14 years.

Their Christmas brand, British Christmas Jumpers, provides personalised jumpers to firms including Google, and even makes designs for the Houses of Parliament gift shop.

It’s like Santa’s very own workshop all year round at the factory, with Christmas jumpers in production from January to December.

Director, Snahal Patal explains: “We saw in 2010 a bit of a trend for Christmas jumpers from the US. It seemed to be getting a little more popular.

“We thought, why don't we start so we designed 10 jumpers within the space of 2-3 weeks.

"We started a website and we ended up selling around 3,000 units in our first year.”

The family business employs around 35 members of staff, some have been at the company for around 25 years.

The staff are all highly skilled, but in order to protect the craft for the future, the firm’s keen to attract more youngsters onto the factory floor.

Snahal said: “It’s very hard to replace the skills, sewing is a skill, knitting is a skill, programming is a skill. So we do need young people to come into this industry otherwise there will be nothing left and I think the knitwear trade, there’s a handful of knitwear factories left in the UK.

Despite the decline in trade here in the UK, demand for Christmas knitwear remains, and at the Jack Masters factory, sustainability is at the heart of production.

Designer Rosa Hutchesson said: “For our Christmas jumpers the main fabric we use is made from a mixture of blended, recycled cotton and crushed up plastic bottles to create recycled polyester, so a blend of the two of them.

“By using this instead of pure virgin cotton we are saving around 2,700 litres of water per jumper.”

Snahal said that over the past five years they have noticed a trend for more niche, personalised Christmas jumpers, but admits their most popular designs this year is their festive Christmas dinner classic, featuring all the trimmings; turkey, pigs in blankets, sprouts and crackers.

Designers have already started working on 2025’s creations, which are soon to enter the production line.

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