A second hand BSA motorcycle combination was purchased to help with deliveries in the early months, replacing the services of a character known as ‘Whistling Harry’ and his handcart, but by 1925 the motorcycle was exchanged for a temperamental Austin Seven motorcar, and Umbro were up and running on four wheels.
The company continued to grow, increasing turnover each year, but it was in the face of the slow trading conditions of the Great Depression that Harold Humphreys took a bold decision that helped make a name for the growing company. “The real breakthrough in the fortunes in those early days was the inauguration of 24 to 48 hour dispatch service,” Harold would recall. “It was a risk but it put us on the map.”
By 1933 the young upstart Umbro must have seemed a distinct threat to the longer established local rivals Bukta, who launched a court case against Humphreys Brothers, claiming copyright infringement in the Umbro catalogue, or the ‘Umbrochure’ as it would later become