Here at Umbro we’ve decided it’s time to tell the history of how the company got to where we are today. As well as creating an archive of all our old football shirts, we’ve begun to collect information about how the company was founded and its early development.
The history of Umbro starts with the history of one man: Harold Charles Humphreys. Born in Mobberley, Cheshire on 31st January 1902, Harold grew up with his father, a decorator from Lancashire, and his mother Minnie, who was originally from Staffordshire. The family ran a small shop and off-licence, and then later a local hotel.
Growing up, Harold was restless and always getting into trouble. He left school aged just 13¾ for his first job at a textile firm in Manchester, where his first task was to dust and polish the bannisters on a staircase seven-stories high.
A tenacious lad, he worked his way up faster than most, trimming bolts of fabric down to fine–tipped gloves and then working his way up to the haberdashery department. There, he developed an appreciation for the details, quality and craftsmanship of fine tailoring. However, as a depression hit Britain and he was out of work for about a week. This short bout of unemployment made such an impression on him that he vowed “never to be out of work again”.
He soon landed at a small sportswear company called “Messrs. Bucks”, who would later go on to become his chief competitor. At the company, he worked as a travelling salesman, but soon grew weary of this life. Seeing no chance of advancement, he decided to start a small sportwear retail business of his own.
At this period, his parents were running the “Bull’s Head Hotel” in Mobberley, and so his mother gave him a small cupboard in which he could keep stock. His initial stock was £5-£10 worth of sports clothing.
Harold had always had an interest in sport and business, right from the time he had earned pocked money as a golf caddy – earning 7 old pence a day with 3 pence extra for lunch if the player was in a generous mood – and so it was natural extension to move into the sportwear business.
At this time of post-war Britain was going through a difficult and unhappy period, suffering from a Depression and general strikes. Sport though was growing, becoming a popular pastime through which people could have fun and forget their worries. And so there was a steady demand for sports clothing, and Harold’s small enterprise grew. He started out with lady “out-workers” sewing shirts in their own homes in the evenings after the rest of the day’s work was done. In a good evening, each woman could produce 12 shirts.
In 1924, aged 22, Harold decided that he should go into the wholesale market. He teamed up with his brother, Wallace Humphreys, and registered a company under the name ‘Humphreys Brothers Limited’ on the 23rd May. The clothes they produced were labelled with ‘Umbro’, a trade name using the letters from Humphreys Brothers.
By this time, he had outgrown the cupboard in the hotel, and so an 18 square foot old washhouse next to a cobbler’s shop in Wilmslow was rented out as a place to hold stock.
This hard work seemed to pay off. By the time Harold died, Umbro was a big business, with multiple factories producing sportswear that was sold and worn the world over. Upon his death, the company retained a family connection, as Harold’s son, John Humphreys, was its Managing Director.
In the next blog post on our company history, we’ll take a look at the first Umbro
. Well done Emma for doing the hard work!
