Viyella grew out of a spinning business founded by William Hollins and Co. which originated in 1784 in Pleasley Mills in Nottinghamshire/Derybshire. The name Viyella comes from the Via Gellia at Cromford, Derbyshire, which was named after the local Gell family. The company bought a mill there in 1890, and in 1894 started experimenting with cloth production. Their fabric was a woollen cotton mix which was unusual because the two were spun together (this was referred to as ‘an intimate blend’). It meant the fabric was more stable and better at taking colour in the dyeing process. It has been described as the first branded fabric in the world; the first exports were recorded in 1899. Initially the fabric was sold to clothing manufacturers, but in the 1930s they set up their own clothing company to use the fabric. It was using up the over-runs and rejects and so was regarded as the poor relation to the side of the business involved in cloth production. Viyella also produced Clydella, their cheaper utility fabric named after the river Clyde (it was produced in factories in Scotland), and Dayella, used in babies' clothes. Viyella was doing lots of manufacturing for Marks & Spencer, which caused conflict with the Viyella own-brand clothing, so the decision was taken to split into two companies (the fabric and the clothing). This was not entirely successful because although the fabric producers had been able to insist their brand was on the clothes produced by the clothing arm of the company, retailers prevented this from continuing. Another factor in the decline of the fabric production was that consumers were starting to turn away from woollen/cotton fabrics as they considered the fabric to be inconvenient and labour intensive to maintain (requiring a maid to wash and dry it). The fabric brand's command on the market place was also challenged as preferrential tariffs with countries like New Zealand disappeared.
Mergers and name changes followed (Viyella International, Carrington Viyellla and Vantona Viyella) and the company owning the brand became Coats Viyella following a merger in 1986. At one time Viyella had been as big as Burberry but it had failed to modernise and was overly reliant on its appeal to the Japanese market as a heritage brand. By the mid 1990s Viyella womenswear was still doing fairly well but their once popular childrenswear had closed and their menswear was in decline. An attempt was made at reengineering their shirt production to produce a lower quality product for a wider market, but Coats finally sold the Viyella fashion business in 2002. It was later bought and sold several times by companies including Austin Reed and Country Casuals.
Peter Duncan joined Carrington Viyella in 1979 as Exports Sales Manager for Viyella Menswear, the garment production side of the business. He was hired to develop the European market and was based at the Aertex factory building in Somercotes, near Alfreton in Derbyshire (named after their Aertex cellular cloth). He was made redundant from selling mens shirts when the menswear section ran into difficulties, but was rehired to work on the Brand Licensing Division of Coats Viyella, which he then became the manager of. Licensing made a lot of money for the conglomerate (about four million pounds per year) and was relatively to cheap to run. Some of the brands he licensed, such as Ladybird and Byford, had no physical range of clothing to promote, whereas Viyella and Van Heusen did have a manufacturing business and a product range for him to work with. Peter would produce identity manuals for brands. These contained guidance on how to market the brand and even how to design clothing ranges and display them in shops. The retailers who purchased these brands were not obliged to follow this guidance and would often point out that they were much more experienced in designing clothing and shop floor displays.
The Ladybird brand had been created by Eric Pasold who established the British Pasolds business in 1932, at Langley near Slough (he was one of three brothers who took over the six-generation family textile manufacturing business). Pasolds Limited merged as minority shareholders with Coats Patons and Baldwin (forerunner of Coats Viyella) in 1965 and Eric Pasold retired in 1968. The Pasold brothers had hoped to find a buyer who would develop the brand and open a chain of Ladybird clothing shops. Ladybird was still much loved and Pasolds thought that buyers Coats Patons would convert the chain of Scotch Wool shops into Ladybird retail outlets. As it happened, Scotch Wool kept the shops, despite the decline in haberdashery sales. Coats Patons were buying Ladybird so that the clothing would have to be made using its thread, with no real idea of how to look after the clothing brand. Discussions began in 1984 over Woolworths having exclusive rights to the brand and in 2002 Woolworths purchased it from Coats Viyella (as Coats Patons and Baldwin had by then become), having been pretty much in control of the brand for some time. They appointed their own licensing manager and designers and it became a best seller in the UK for childrens clothing. When Woolworths went into administration in 2009, both Ladybird and Woolworths were taken on by UK online retailer Shop Direct.
In 1992/1993, while Coats Viyella still owned the Ladybird brand, Peter Duncan produced brand guidelines for them in the hope of finding licencees in the overseas market. Woolworths had forced Coats Viyella to update the look of the ladybird logo so the manuals he produced were designed to impress potential buyers with the proud heritage of the brand whilst trying to ensure that those running the brand didn’t deviate from what it had become. Peter Duncan also commissioned an animation to be made focussing on the Ladybird character to give it back some personality (see related collection MS 1026) and Coats Viyella held an event for licensees at the headquarters of BAFTA (the British Acadamy of Film and Television Arts). Coats Viyella also produced fashion forecasts which they sent out twice a year, even though they didn’t have a clothing range of their own. He successfully sold the brand to various international organisers some of whom would design their own ranges for sale, and one licencee in Saudi Arabia did develop a ladybird store.
