Macdonald Sporrans

Yet further proof that Scottish culture has influence in the strangest of places, as a small French Atlantic island called Ouessant has created a distinctive Celtic tartan and registered it with the overseers of the traditional motif in Scotland. Following the visit of MSP Rob Gibson to his island home, Serge Cariou (Ouessant, Brittany, France) decided to design his own tartan.

“A few of us wear kilts on Ouessant, to cock a snook at outsiders as a joke. So, after a trip to Scotland, we thought ‘Why not design a tartan in our island’s colours?’,” Serge Cariou said in Brest, on mainland Brittany.

According to Cariou, the new Ouessant tartan includes red, yellow and black to represent the flag of the Isle of Ushant and a black, green and white check to represent Brittany. You can see the tartan below:

Ouessant, known as Enez Eusa in Breton, lies around 30 kilometres (20 miles) off the Breton peninsula, making it the most westerly inhabited territory in France, and shares Brittany’s Celtic culture and traditions. Jean-Yves Cozan, who represents the Ouessant Township and the District of Ouessant on the County Council of Finistere, has kindly authorised the use of the name ‘Oeussant’ and ‘Eusa’ for the registration of the tartan.

“This tartan is not a gimmick, it’s an act of cultural identity to assert that we have roots,” declared Cozan, Ouessant regional councillor.

“Just as a rootless Japanese puts his kimono on when he gets home, I’ll put my kilt on when I get back to Ouessant,” he said, brandishing a Eusa kilt cut for the occasion by a Scottish tailor.

The Eusa design has been entered on the Scottish Register of Tartans as number 10,236, 10 years after a loosening of the rules as to who can declare a tartan led to an explosion of non-Scottish and non-clan motifs.

The Scottish Register of Tartans (the Register) is a national repository of tartan designs and has thousands of different designs registered. You can search for many of these tartans on our own tartan finder. Why not give it a try?

We’ve just put some helpful new measuring guides online which you can find here: Measuring Guides.

We know that it’s difficult buying clothes without trying them on, especially if they’re being custom made for you! However, taking a couple of minutes to get accurate measurements before ordering means that your brand new kilt is much more likely to fit perfectly.

As always, we’d love some feedback on what you think of them. Drop us an email, leave a  comment  or give us a call to let us know how they could be improved.

We’ve teamed up with the band Cross the Border to bring you some great new Scottish music.

You can listen to and buy their music via their site here.

I’m a big fan of new artists using new methods to promote their music and you can listen to the whole album on the site for free and share it with others. If you like, you can also purchase their album via CD or download.

My personal favourite is Sake of the Blade:

We were proud to sponsor Peter Locke in his Mazda RX8 PZ at the Fintray Hill Climb a couple of weeks ago.

Peter is a friend of mine that I know through the RX8 Owners Club, so and we were glad to do this with him and we think the logo looks pretty neat on the side of the car!

All the photos above were taken by Flat Out Photography.

A couple of shots taken outside our offices with me standing next to Peter’s car, and both our PZ’s next to each other.

If you are around the Edinburgh area over the next couple of weeks, you might just catch Peter driving around with our lovely graphic on the side of his car!

EDIT: You can view a playlist of videos of the Fintray Hillclimb that took place on 14-15 August 2010 here.

Our online store has been running Zen-Cart open source shopping cart software since it was launched in November 2007.
Unfortunately, since that time, Zen-Cart hasn’t really moved forward. The new version was detailed in 2008, but the team didn’t want to commit to a definite release date. Since then, no new information has been given on when it will be released.
We have waited patiently for it to come out, but it still looks like a long way off. When it does eventually get released, it will probably be an ‘alpha‘ or ‘beta‘ release which means it will need to undergo serious testing before it’s ready to be used on a live website. That process could take about 6 months. However, once it’s ready to go live, we then need to integrate it to our site…which could take another few months.

So from date of release, we’ll be looking at about 9 months before we can use it on our live site (if everything goes to plan). My estimation of the date of release (based on 2 year old information) is that it’s at least 6 months away, possibly 12 months away.

Therefore, total time before we can expect to provide a significant update to our website: 15 – 21 months!

We have looked at alternatives to Zen-Cart a number of times, but have never found anything which we considered to be secure, stable and advanced enough for our store.

Magento was first released in 2007, and is now on version 1.4.1. When I looked at it in 2008, it was not mature enough – there were serious security loopholes and some basic functionality missing. It has come a long way since then.

In the same amount of time that Zen-Cart has stood still, Magento has been born and has outgrown it. We have approximately 20 modifications to the standard version of Zen-Cart, 18 of those are included in Magento by default – the other two were custom built by us.

On a technical level, Magento is built in an entirely different way which makes it significantly more stable and easier to build upon. I believe that the sooner we make the change to a more stable foundation, the better we can make the site in the future.

We’ll update you with more information soon, but I would hope to have the new system up and running in the next few months which means you’ll see some great new features being launched pretty soon.

We like to think here at Macdonald Sporrans that the kilt is a pretty damn sexy piece of clothing. And now it is official. In a recent poll of international traditional clothing, 67 per cent of respondents put the kilt in top position, with many women describing it as “very attractive” on a man – single guys take note!

The survey of 2,034 people by travel website www.sunshine.co.uk showed the kilt was streets ahead of it’s nearest rivals – the kimono from Japan and the hulu skirt from Hawaii; the Mexican sombrero was also popular. However, German lederhosen was considered “very unfashionable” by 87 per cent of people.

In a more humorous aspect of the results, as many as 24 per cent thought the shell suit best represented England’s national dress.

The kilt has enjoyed a constant popularity over the years and lately prominent fashion designers such as Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood have brought the item onto the catwalks of the fashion world; most prominently the New York fashion show, “Dressed to Kilt”.

Tessa Hartmann, Scottish Fashion week organiser has said: “The kilt is one of the most iconic fashion outfits in the world. It dates back to the 16th century and has been constantly updated. Designers continue to do different things with it; people like Paul Smith, Vivienne Westwood and the late Alexander McQueen have had great fun with the kilt.”

She added: “If you can pull off (wearing] a kilt, you can excel. It’s much more of a statement than a black tie.”

We ourselves have seen a great increase of kilts being sold to countries such as Australia, France, Germany and even as far as Singapore. This just goes to show that you don’t have to be Scottish to wear a kilt and look great. So if you are looking to wow the ladies at your next wedding do then get in touch!

You may remember that we introduced some changes to our tartan pricing system back in April. We didn’t stop there…we’ve been working hard on making the way you choose a tartan easier and more user friendly and I’m proud to say that we’ve launched a new tartan chooser.

When you’re viewing any product that is custom made for you in any of our tartans, clicking the ‘select a tartan’ link will now open up a tartan chooser panel on the same page. This easy to use panel will help guide you to choosing your perfect tartan.

To make things easier, we’ve built a help section right into it. If you need more information at any time, simply click the ‘Information’ icon at the top and a help section will slide down giving you more information on what you’re looking at.

We’re always keen to do things better so would love your feedback on how it can be improved or what you like about it.

We’ve added a new tankard to our extensive collection of nearly 400 tankards. It’s our first stainless steel tankard and is available in a 16oz capacity. 16oz is a little smaller than our standard tankard capacity of 20 ounces, or 1 pint. However, it’s stocky shape gives it a very attractive appearance, and it’s slightly smaller size just means it’ll easily fit a bottle of beer, but not quite a full pint of ale! You can get more information on tankard capacity here.

I’m confident that this will be one of our most popular tankards – it’s competitively priced, looks great and has optional engraving so that you can personalise your gift to give it that extra-special flavour.

Most of our tankards are hand made in the UK with high quality pewter. The craftsmanship that goes into their construction is to a very high standard and we hope to expand on this in the next few months with some photos of the manufacturing and engraving processes. It always amazes me to see how these products are made – particularly when they are still made virtually entirely by hand, right on our door step! There’s not much manufacturing that still takes place in the UK and we’re proud to still be here.

Most stainless steel products are made in Asia and then imported into the UK. Due to this, we are able to offer the 16oz stainless steel tankard at a great price of only £14.69! As with all our products, bulk discounts are available for large orders.

Stainless steel is a harder metal than pewter, so should keep it’s shape a bit better over time. Pewter is more malleable so can become misshapen or dented if not cared for properly. However, stainless steel is much more resistant to this kind of problem, and should last better if being thrown about a bit more. If you want more information on how to care for your pewter products check out our pewter care page.

As an online-only company, the security of our website is of paramount importance to us, and to our customers.

Website security is a very general term, and can include many different technical aspects. One of the most important aspects is known as Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL. In simple terms, this is a security protocol that encrypts the data you enter into your web browser on your computer so that it can travel to our servers without anyone else being able to read it.

This is important because people enter important and sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, onto our website, and we need to make sure that no one can intercept that information.

However, making a secure payment is only useful if you know who you are paying!

Previously, we used a standard SSL certificate which encrypts the data securely and prevents spying. Today, we have installed a new type of SSL certificate called an Extended Validation SSL Certificate. The extended validation part means that before we can use the certificate, the company issuing it must go through additional checks to ensure that we are who we say we are, and record that information with the certificate.

Now, you can be assured that we are who we say we are. When going to any secure page on our site (checkout, login, my account etc) you will see the address bar on your browser turn green and display our company name. Clicking on that will give you some extra information such as our contact details. Surprisingly, not many companies choose to use this type of certificate as it’s significantly more expensive than the standard one. However, we feel that the extra expense justifies the additional security that our customers now receive.

Our Multi-Domain EV SSL Certificate is provided by Comodo, one of the leaders in online security.

We are aware that recently there have been a few fears raised about a potential knife law which could look to make the possession of certain Sgian Dubh’s illegal. This law has been introduced in order to crack down on the inherent knife crime and concealed weapon culture found in Scotland’s streets.

Shops and online retailers selling any form of knife have been warned to keep them to less than three and a half inches in length but this has led to a large outcry from Scottish highland dress retailers who believe that this law will hit consumers and tourists who want to buy “heritage or highland dress products” the hardest.

Under the far-reaching proposals anyone buying a knife in the restricted category would have to produce photographic ID, and the dealers would have to keep a record of customers and the knives sold.

During its consultation on the controversial plans, a government spokesman said: “This may be a consequence of the scheme, but there is no practical way of exempting tourists from the requirements of the licensing scheme.

“Tourists will still be able to make purchases of sgian dubhs or other small knives that have a length of blade of under three and a half inches, as these will be exempt from the licensing laws.”

We are happy to announce that this law will not affect any of our customers as we can guarantee that all of our Sgian Dubh’s have a blade that measures less than three and a half inches. As an integral part of our highland dress we are adamant that any changes in the law will be met in order that we can continue to stock these fantastically varied and stylish items. We also fully support any law that aims to cut down knife crime in our country.

It is ironic that the whole tradition of carrying a Sgian Dubh in the top of the wearers sock was originally started in order to avoid having concealed weapons. Courtesy and etiquette would demand that when entering the home of a friend, any concealed weapons would be revealed. It follows that the Sgian Dubh would be removed from its hiding place and displayed in the stocking top held securely by the garters. Of course it is now more commonly used for ceremonially cutting haggis or as the perfect way to compliment your kilt outfit.