|
History of the Ladybird Company |
||||
 |
||||
| Almost 300 years ago a Bohemian weaver called Johannes George Pasold established a knitting and weaving business in Fleissen, Czechoslovakia. Thanks to the creativity, marketing flair and technical innovation of successive generations of his family we have a thriving Ladybird business today. | ||||
 |
Legend has it that Johannes saw a ladybird in a dream which inspired him to establish the business. What is certain is that from the earliest days the Pasold company were always at the forefront of garment technology, using the latest machinery and manufacturing techniques to knit cloth that was silky smooth, pleasing to the eye, hard wearing and fun to wear. In the eighteenth century (long before the industrial revolution) Pasolds were using not only looms but knitting machines too. |
|||
| Machines were acquired from far and wide, and family members and co-workers had to go to great lengths to transport them to the factory and get them inside. They had to remove windows from the upper floors and install special hoists to drag the machinery into place. People came from far and wide to admire their array of wonderful machinery, and the garments that the Pasold company made on them. |  |
|||
 |
Successive generations of the family learnt more and more about the machinery, making them engineers as well as weavers. Not only would they specify the machines that they wanted made, but as the years went by they started to adapt the machines to make them part of an integrated, quality- controlled process. |
|||
| By
the beginning of the 20th century Pasold garments were famous across
Europe. Although the family often talked of the Ladybird legend,
and how it had inspired their interest in machinery, the products were
branded under the White Bear brand-name, with a logo rather like the one
on today's Fox's Glacier Mints !
Fleissen was located in the Sudetenland towards Chekoslovakia's border with Germany. Company bosses travelled to Prague, Vienna, Berlin, Paris and London to sell their wares. But in the early 1930s they started to worry. With amazing insight they noted the volatility of political life in Germany and wondered where it was all leading. They decided to diversify and to invest in a new part in England, well away from the growing political unrest. |
 |
|||
 |
They chose a green field site at Langley in Berkshire and secured the necessary permissions to build a small factory. Work was completed in 1932, when they recruited a team of local workers. They had soon established the machinery to get started. One of their first orders came from Woolworths - totalling 28,000 dozen pairs of knickers in the season. It got them started and the Pasolds never forgot. |
|||
|
|
||||
| In 1938 the Pasolds' fears about the political situation in Europe proved well-founded, as Adolf Hitler invaded the Sudetenland as the "liberator" of this picturesque part of Czechoslovakia. Fleissen, the Pasold family home for generations, had been granted unique religious freedom under the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 - privileges that had lasted for 290 years. But not any more. As the latest addition to the Third Reich every aspect of life was to be directed by the Germans - not least factories making garments. The family wisely moved to Langley, making Britain their base. |  |
|||
 |
Taking
stock in 1938 the family could count many successes. They had
invented the ruderleibchen , to become known in English as the
T-shirt, as an undergarment at the turn of the twentieth century.
Pasold were the first to produce these garments in bright multiple
colours (as illustrated) rather than leaving in a plain bleached or
single-tone colour.
They had established a second manufacturing base in the UK, and a cousin was setting up a further enterprise in the British Dominion of Canada. The British operation, like central Europe had a full order book - but at least was for fashion and underwear, rather than for uniforms and overalls. |
|||
| Their main worry looking at the British company's progress was that virtually all of their business was with the chain stores - principally F. W. Woolworth, followed by Marks and Spencer and to a lesser extent British Home Stores and Lewis's. The danger was that if they lost a big contract they would be in trouble.Pasolds tested the White Bear brand name, but this did not appeal to British buyers - they needed something else. Quick as a flash (inspired off in the legendary way, but a recurrence of the ladybird dream) they decided upon the Ladybird brand name - but found that it was already registered, though it had never been used. | ||||
 |
Pasolds tested the White Bear brand name, but this did not appeal to British buyers - they needed something else. Quick as a flash (with "legendary" inspiration) they decided upon the Ladybird brand name, only to find it was already registered, though it had never been used. The Pasolds could not believe their luck when the Klinger Manufacturing Co. agreed to sell them the brand name if Pasold repaid the £5 it had cost Klinger to register the name ! |
|||
 |
The creative team at Langley set to work to bring the Ladybird brand to life. Their work was truly inspired. |  |
||
| The Ladybird characters, which started to appear from 1950 onwards, captured everyone's imagination. Many of the campaigns featured the spirit of the age - with mad scientists, computers, space rockets and stations and the new Zebra crossings all featuring. | ||||
 |
 |
 |
||
 |
||||
 |
By
the mid 1960s Ladybird was established as one of the most successful
brands in Britain, with the Langley factory producing millions of
garments every year and exporting them all over the world.
To Pasolds surprise, despite repeated offers, the chain stores chose not to stock products branded Ladybird - preferring to by from Pasold and sell as Winfield, St. Michael or Prova |
|||
| As a result Ladybird clothes were found in specialist clothing chains stores and the up-market department stores, and were priced accordingly. Many 60s parents came to appreciate the good quality of the garments which meant that they lasted much longer than cheaper brands. But the pricing put the clothes out of reach of many ordinary families. |  |
|||
 |
Throughout the 1960s there was a spate of takeovers among textile companies. As an old established and respected family the Pasolds were approached by a series of companies asking them to act as "white knight" taking them over to prevent the worse fate of a takeover by a conglomerate. This made their business get more and more complicated and, by a perverse logic, more vulnerable to takeover themselves. At the same time there was a lot of consolidation in the retail industry as, one by one, small fashion shops closed or became part of chains. This put margins under pressure and led Pasolds to try to establish a chain of Ladybird shops - exploring joint venture options with John Lewis Partnership in 1962 and Provoust the owners of the French chain Pingouin in 1963. Both fell through. |
|||
| In
1964 the Pasolds explored the possibility of a merger with Coats, Paton
& Baldwin, the world's largest sewing thread manufacturers, with
their headquarters in Glasgow. This looked like the ideal
partnership as Coats controlled many of the raw materials needed and
could help Ladybird to launch their own threads and wool, and had a
chain of 300 Scotch Wool shops which were running at a loss. So in
January 1965 the companies merged.
Despite the best of intentions, Ladybird started to lose its uniqueness, drawn into the larger conglomerate Coats Viyella. Progressively manufacturing moved away from Langley. |
 |
|||
 |
In 1984 Woolworths approached Coats Viyella to explore the possibility of securing exclusive rights to the Ladybird brand in the UK. Coats Viyella's negotiating position centred around design and product quality. They could assist with both, but Woolworths would have to agree to a major changes to their business processes and much tighter quality control procedures. Woolies would also have to pay a fee fixed per garment that carried the Ladybird logo. The companies launched a small trial while work continued to design the new ranges. The sample stores sold these ranges very quickly in 1985, demonstrating the potential. Then in Spring 1986 Ladybird at Woolworths lifted off with dramatic results, covered in a separate exhibit in our Virtual Museum. |
|||
 |
In the year 2000, 16 years after the launch of Ladybird at Woolworths, as part of a corporate restructuring programme following a dip in profits, Coats Viyella decided to dispose of various businesses in their Contract Manufacturing and Viyella International Divisions. The Ladybird Company, including worldwide brand rights were sold to Woolworths. |
|||
 |
||||
 |
In
the late 1950s and early 1960s Eric Pasold dreamt of establishing a
chain of Ladybird shops across the United Kingdom to provide a secure
route to market for their clothing products. Later in the 1980s he
strongly supported the idea of Woolworths as the exclusive UK
outlet for Ladybird, citing the long-standing relationship between the
companies.
Pasold and his family created the brand through creativity, product innovation, marketing flair, and a strong commitment to product quality. We're proud to follow in that tradition. |
|||
 |
||||
|
Fashion
overview 1909-2004 Paper
patterns, cotton and thread Legend
of the Scarlet Ladybird
|
||||
