From Barbie to Marvel, Aykroyd & Sons offers specialist licensed apparel for all the family
With licenses including Bluey, Pokémon, Hello Kitty, Wicked, Paw Patrol, and Peppa Pig, Aykroyd & Sons (Aykroyds) is a well-recognized name in the field of specialist licensed apparel. From its early days in garment printing, the company has developed strong partnerships with a range of renowned international licensing organizations, allowing for the design and manufacture of garments, nightwear, and swimwear for children and adults.
Founded in 1918 by John Henry Aykroyd in Manchester, England, Aykroyds remains a family business with the fifth generation – Ffion, Stacy, Donna, and Sion – now leading operations. To learn more about Aykroyds’ latest developments, we sit down with Ffion and Sion, Managing Directors.
“Historically, our products have always been clothing, and we moved into licensed clothing in the mid-1980s,” Sion opens. “Leveraging our relationships with
suppliers that we were supplying with non-licensed products, we began providing licensed items following permission from Mattel to use the Barbie brand and logo on our clothing. At the time, there were very few licensed products available to buy, especially in the category of nightwear. It seemed alien to us to add Barbie branding to our clothing, but it was the start of a new era for Aykroyds.
“The success of our Barbie license was followed by additional contracts,” he continues. “We added Disney to our portfolio in the 1990s, and from there, the licensed side of the business has rapidly evolved into new product categories such as swimwear items like swimsuits, shorts, and toweling ponchos, as well as everyday children’s clothing like t-shirts, joggers, and sweatshirts. Today, our portfolio encompasses an entire range of apparel, but we must move quickly to adapt to new licenses and trends as they emerge.”
Ffion adds: “Our head office is in Altrincham, Manchester, and in the UK, we also have a design studio in Leek, Staffordshire, and our warehouse and distribution center in Bala, Wales, from which we manufactured products for several years before moving production overseas in 2007. The clothing industry was shifting, and we moved to China 15 years ago, opening our Shanghai office to help with our sourcing strategy by dealing directly with factories.
“We then further extended our sourcing team in the Middle East with the recent addition of an office in Hong Kong, which also adds specialist expertise to our product portfolio. Our team in Hong Kong specialize in denim and woven products, such as jeans, dungarees, and woven clothing. As these were all areas in which we lacked knowledge and expertise, the team in Hong Kong have enabled us to expand our reach into these categories.
“We supply the UK’s retail space from high street stores and supermarkets to online specialists, with our top three clients being Primark, Tesco, and George at Asda,” she shares. “We also serve a range of retailers like M&S, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Next, and Matalan, as well as online platforms like Amazon and character.com. While our customers are all based in the UK and Ireland, our products also end up in other territories including the US and Europe, particularly France, Spain, Italy, and Belgium, as our customers distribute stock to their clients around the globe.”
Explaining the process of working with Aykroyds from initial licensing to product delivery, Sion says: “The entire process begins with acquiring the licensing rights from the required brand. We take a proactive approach to relationships by attending events and engaging in direct conversations, which helps us stay at the forefront of conversations about earning and winning the rights to new licenses with the likes of Disney, Warner Brothers, BBC, or Hasbro, to name a few.
“We then move through the design and sales process, which we’ve heavily invested in over the last few years. Our design team works around six-to-12 months in advance of a season, so we’re currently working on designs for the 2025 winter season. These designs are then pitched to customers, and once agreed, we have designated teams that work with each specific client to ensure products are not duplicated to multiple retailers and manage delivery and distribution of the products once manufactured.”
Ffion elaborates: “We also provide buying samples to clients, enabling them to experience a product before committing to large orders. In recent years, we’ve invested in 3D designing and fitting to reduce the amount of sampling required for each project. The 3D process not only allows buyers to preview a product, but also means they can examine how clothing fits from the front, back, and sides. Although this helps from a cost perspective, it also supports our sustainability goals by reducing the amount of sample products required every year.”
As our conversation ends, talk turns to the year ahead. “With lead times extended by an average of two weeks, we’re seeing increased demand for a quick response option in the UK market,” Ffion says. “We’re speaking with UK printers to establish a faster alternative to help us service customers wanting a much shorter lead time of around ten-to-14 days. We’re also focused on growing our non-licensed offering, which currently accounts for around ten percent of our total business.
“We’ll continue to obtain new licenses and expand our offering to new product categories,” she concludes. “We’re investing in our teams across all departments as part of our mission to drive new sales; it’s critical for us to not only have a great sales and design team, but also a great merchandise and technical team to oversee project delivery. However, while we talk about new product areas, we’ll continue to drive sales and expansion within our bread and butter offering of licensed nightwear products. I hope to see the business continue to thrive as leaders in providing licensed apparel to the UK markets.”