12 Facts About Freemans

Freemans is a British online and catalogue clothing retailer headquartered in Bradford, England.

Freemans offers a range of products, predominantly clothing, footwear and homewares.

Freemans specialised in selling clothing items and distributed its catalogue each month throughout the United Kingdom.

Freemans used agency representatives in local areas as a form of credit control and to manage sales, with most goods being sold on credit.

Freemans grew to dominate the mail order landscape in the 1930s, being the largest mail order company in the UK, with over 30,000 agents.

Related searches

New levels of disposable income as part of a "post-war" boom led to increased levels of consumerism and Freemans capitalised on this by producing a fully colourised 1000-page catalogue that was distributed by mail and featured a much wider range of products.

In 1963 Freemans PLC was floated on the stock market as it became a public limited company, and it installed its very first computer, being the first mail order company to do so.

Once again Freemans looked at an innovative way to progress its business as it introduced a telephone ordering service for its agents.

In 1988 Freemans was purchased by Sears PLC, whose other investments included bookmakers William Hill and the controlling arm of Selfridges, turning it into one of the country's largest retail organisations.

Year later Freemans was presented an award by More magazine for "Most Aspirational Mail Order Catalogue" and by Prima magazine for "Best Mail Order Brand", a title it retained the following year.

Freemans embraced the concept of celebrity endorsement and elicited the help of one of the world's first international supermodels, Twiggy, to promote the brand in the 1960s.

Freemans were shirt sponsors for local football team Bradford City AFC from 1991 to 1993; the shirt was made by Bukta in Bradford City's traditional claret and amber colours for the home shirt and a plain white for the away strip.