History
Jack Wills was founded in 1999 by Peter Williams and Robert Shaw, the former who named the company after his grandfather, Jack Williams. The original store was in Salcombe, Devon located at 22 Fore Street. This original address is often written into the brand's handbook, clothing labels and in-store signs. In 2008 the Aubin & Wills brand was launched, designed to appeal to older customers. It was withdrawn in 2012.
The brands incorporates aspects of traditional British military and sporting design in its products, and uses a navy blue and pink colour scheme for its packaging and some of its products. The company often houses its stores in historical buildings, such as old pubs or town houses .
The majority of its stores are in the UK, however there are two branches in Ireland, in Kildare and Dublin. In May and July 2010, Jack Wills opened American stores in Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard and Boston. There are now thirteen stores in the US. Despite this expansion, CEO Peter Williams stated the brand will remain "British, British, British". In recent years, Jack Wills has begun to open stores outside of the UK, with a franchise store in Jersey, three stores in Hong Kong, two stores in Dubai, one in Kuwait and one in Lebanon.
Read more about this topic: Jack Wills
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“There is no example in history of a revolutionary movement involving such gigantic masses being so bloodless.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)