 | |
| Type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Retail |
| Founded | Early 19th Century |
| Headquarters | Birmingham (formerly), Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire |
| Parent | J Sainsbury plc |
| Website | Chad Valley |
Chad Valley is a long-established brand of toys in the United Kingdom owned by Sainsbury's.
The company has its roots in a printing business established by Anthony Bunn Johnson in Birmingham in the early 19th century. Under the management of his son Joseph and grandson Alfred the company moved to the suburb of Harborne, in the valley of a stream called the Chad Brook, giving its name to the Chad Valley district, from which the company name is derived.
Chad Valley made a decision to expand their range to soft toys before World War I. They mass-produced their new Teddy bears in Harborne [1]
In 1938 the company received a royal warrant as 'Toymakers to H.M. The Queen'. [2] When Princess Elizabeth acceded to the throne in 1952 the warrant was changed to read 'Toymakers to H.M. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother'. [1]
The company moved away from manufacturing toys in the Second World War. Instead they produced goods to help the war effort such as wooden instrument cases, cases for the barrels of anti-aircraft guns, hospital beds and electrical coils and starters. [2]
In 1945 the company resumed toy production. Tin plate toys were produced for the first time although manufacture was outsourced to Metal Box, a company with the skills and machinery needed to produce printed toys. This new tin plate range was such a success that in 1946 the company moved production in-house. They purchased the Birmingham metalworking company AS Cartwright to cut and fold metal, Winfield to produce clockwork mechanisms and Barronia Metals and True to Type Products to produce precision engineering equipment. [3]
The radio broadcaster Kenneth Horne was Chairman and Managing Director of the company from 1956 to 1958. [4]
The company was one of the UK's leading toymakers for most of the 20th century; by 1960 it was operating seven factories and employing over 1,000 people. In the 1970s, however, it closed several factories and cuts were made in staffing and production, and 1975 saw only two factories remaining. The company was taken over by Palitoy in 1978. [2]
The brand name was bought by Woolworths in 1988 and remained in use until that company's insolvency in 2009. Home Retail Group, the parent company of retailers Homebase and Argos, purchased the brand for £5 million in January 2009. [5] The Chad Valley brand is now available exclusively at Argos. In March 2016, Sainsbury's bought Home Retail Group for approximately £1.4 billion and Chad Valley became a brand of Sainsbury's. [6]
Louis Marx and Company was an American toy manufacturer in business from 1919 to 1980. They made many types of toys including tin toys, toy soldiers, toy guns, action figures, dolls, toy cars and model trains. Some of their notable toys are Rock'em Sock'em Robots, Big Wheel tricycles, Disney branded dollhouses and playsets based on TV shows like Gunsmoke. Its products were often imprinted with the slogan "One of the many Marx toys, have you all of them?"
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Britains, earlier known by the founder's name W. Britain, is a British toy brand and former manufacturing company known for its die-cast scale models of agricultural machinery, and figurines. The company was established in 1893 as a toy soldiers manufacturer.
A tin toy, or tin lithograph toy, is a mechanical toy made out of tinplate and colorfully painted by chromolithography to resemble primarily a character or vehicle.
J. Chein & Company was an American toy manufacturer in business from 1903 through the 1980s. It is best remembered today for its mechanical toys made from stamped and lithographed tin produced from the 1930s through the 1950s.
Alba was a British consumer electronics brand used for budget electronics.
The Bedford Dunstable plant was a truck and bus vehicle assembly plant, located in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, England. Developed and opened by Vauxhall Motors in 1942 under instruction from the Ministry of Production as a shadow factory, it was transferred to the Bedford Vehicles unit in the 1950s. Closed after receivership in 1992, it was subsequently demolished and redeveloped as a retail park and associated industrial estate.
Schreiber was a brand of fitted kitchen and furniture operating in the United Kingdom.
