“It was becoming obvious at that time that we were having increasing issues in our relationship with Adidas,” admits Charles Humphreys, by then Umbro’s Director of International Development. “We were both trying to sign up teams but we were kind of all the same company – yet we weren’t! It was always likely that Humphreys Brothers and Adidas would part ways somewhere down the line.”
Freed from the Adidas contract in 1986, Umbro were finally able to put football boots into production. The company expanded out of all recognition in the Eighties, as it chased hard after the global vision that John Humphreys had always imagined for the brand. In an attempt to keep up with the phenomenal demand for the company’s products in the US, caused by the significant growth in ‘soccer’ at grassroots level and by the popular status of Umbro shorts, or ‘Umbros’ as they became known, the company assigned American rights to Stone Manufacturing, who took over Umbro USA in 1981. With Humphreys Brothers Ltd unable to fund the needed global expansion, the following year it entered into a joint venture with Stone to market to the remainder of the world.
Growth remained steady in North America as Umbro USA, unencumbered by the huge sums that the mother company was paying for club contracts at home, started to outpace its UK counterpart. With Britain in recession, Stone managed to acquire Umbro for the knockdown price of £2.9m in September 1992, ending an association with the Humphreys family that had lasted 68 years.