Roger Saul, the founder of Mulberry, is to open a designer shopping village alongside the luxury brand’s Somerset-based factory later this month.

Saul said the £10m project planned for the Somerset town of Shepton Mallet would target the 130,000 people who visit the Mulberry factory shop, based in the same town, each year.

The new shopping village will open on the site of a former textile mill alongside the Kilver Court site where the Mulberry factory and factory shop is located.

“The centre of the town at the moment is a disaster,” said Saul. “Fingers crossed this project will bring it alive again.”

The outlet centre will sell brands such as Fred Perry, Duchamp and Myla and will open later this month, 40 years after Saul first founded Mulberry.

Saul no longer sits on the Mulberry board following a fall-out with chairman and chief executive Godfrey Davis in 2002, but he still owns the Kilver Court site.