Hi Ken,

First the quick answer: yes, it's perfectly possible to weave a heavier weight piece in any design you like. But, as you have found, it's not currently possible directly off the web site, so please contact our customer service team for prices etc.

I'll also try to shed more light on the full picture, for your interest and anyone else with similar questions...

Yes, Glen Affric was our original in-house name for D.C. Dalgliesh (and other commission weavers) before we took over the business. It's long been our practice to disguise the identities of many of our suppliers, not least because in those days the mill was still selling direct to consumers (a practice we've now stopped, as I believe it's poor business practice for manufacturers to compete directly with their own supply chain).

But the headline 13oz fabric we now supply under that name is not, in fact, currently woven by Dalgliesh, but rather by another high quality local commission weaver. The reason is simply that we can offer a better price that way, via a producer that is a bit more mechanised than the almost entirely hand-worked processes at Dalgliesh. (If you haven't seen the video on the Dalgliesh site, it's worth a watch.)

So why don't we offer our own Dalgliesh alternatives (15oz & 11 oz wool, and 3oz and 1oz pure spun silk) off the page to order as you suggest? The truth is more mundane than that. In fact we did give a similar choice when we first launched the online Tartan Designer facility, in keeping with our policy of empowering the customer with us much information and options as possible. But we found that the enormous choice was just confusing the heck out of too many people! And most customers were ordering medium weight wool for kilts anyway. So as a 'short term' expedient measure we scaled back the range to the one most commercially attractive headline offer.

I put 'short term' into scare quotes as that was at least a couple of years ago and it's always been our intention to revert to a full choice. In fact we have mock-ups for the tech team waiting to go, together with a whole raft of other improvements. But that's currently pending the resource availability, as our team is working flat out on other business priorities. So unless we go hunting for a rich investor (which is always in the back of our minds as one option) we have to cut our cloth accordingly... ho ho, pardon the pun.

There's also one other big reason it's not happening right now. This is that all sorts of developments are on hold right now, until we've completed a major business reorganisation, rebranding, and relaunch. I can't say too much publicly about this at the moment for obvious reasons. But we've been recruiting like mad recently and have brought in a few fabulous new people already, with several adverts ongoing in the hunt for similar stars. This is all building up to some really big changes, as we seek to make the most of the really unique experience and competences we've put together over the years. Anyone that's followed our company history will know that we've always been pioneers, which countless other companies have copied relentlessly... flattering, but annoying - especially when they copycat to the extent of cynical intellectual property theft, as even our bigger competitors have done. So now Dalgliesh is not only the star in this firmament, but gives us a USP that no one else can piggy-back on our ideas and work. So watch this space...