A brief history of Owen Barry

1920

Owen Barry born in Street Somerset – youngest of three sons to Reginald & Hilda Barry

1935

Owen started his apprenticeship as a trainee leather glove cutter with Robbins of Yeovil

1940

Owens’ apprenticeship was postponed as he was called up to serve his country. By the end of the war Owen had been promoted to a sergeant in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.

1945

Owen was demobbed and returned to Somerset to complete his leather cutting apprenticeship.

1948

After his indenture papers had been fulfilled Owen decided to start his own manufacturing business.

1950's

The business grew and diversified from gloves into accessories. Owen married and his wife Jean gave birth to their daughter – Lucinda.

1960's

The business carried on growing and diversified again, this time into clothing – suede, leather & sheepskin jackets

1970's

Cindi joined the business in 1976 straight from school and Ken Ellis two years later.

1980's

Business started to get tough due to the huge amounts of cheaper imports that were now flooding onto the UK High Street. Eventually after many years of difficult trading the business was closed by the bank in May 1990.

1990

July - Cindi bought the company back from the receivers and started to rebuild from scratch – this time she and Ken decided that export was the way to go.

1992

Ken and Cindi started opening major North American accounts, building the USA business annually – Many of those earliest US accounts are still key Owen Barry customers to this day

2000

Ken and Cindi started to work with Watanabe & Co from Tokyo, and jointly with Watanabe have developed Japan into their 2nd largest worldwide market.

2008

60 years celebration of the founding of Owen Barry Ltd

To date

Cindi has a daughter Chas who is heavily involved in and equally as passionate about the business, but it is only thanks to the whole Owen Barry team (past and present) who are responsible for the heritage, quality, service and love that you will see handcrafted in every single product.

The future

Owen Barry have a growing following from all over the globe – now also being represented in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Russia, Belgium and Germany – oh yes and don’t forget the UK – we eventually came home.