Coates (shaving)

Coates

Type	Shaving Product Manufacture
Founded	1847
Headquarters	Hungerford, England
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Robert Johnston, Charlotte Johnston, Andrew Gidden
Products	Shaving brushes, Shaving Cream, Hair Brushes, Toothbrushes
Employees	3

Coates was started by James Coate who established his first brush works in London in 1875, but the company moved out to Somerset in 1883, opening factories in Axminster and Chard. Coate's later amalgamated with A Simpson, another brush manufacturer. The company stopped production a few years ago, however in 2010 the company was purchased by TGS Products Ltd and moved to Hungerford Berkshire where the new owners are currently in the process of trying to revive the company.

History

The Coates brush company was founded in 1847 by the original owner James Coate in London. In about 1875 the company was relocated to two factories one in Axminster, Devon and the other in Chard, Somerset where they continued making shaving, hair and toothbrushes. In 1941 the shaving brush company, A Simpson lost their factory during the blitz and in the spirit of wartime cooperation Coate’s allowed them to continue production at their water powered factory in Chard.

During the war Coates managed to continue production even though some supplies where sourced from Germany, this was managed by having the goods exported from Germany to a neutral country then imported to the UK from that neutral country.

After the war the companies worked very closely together and eventually Coates amalgamated with Simpsons in 1990, but the name still lived on in the range of shaving creams that they continued to produce. The Simpsons company was sold in 2008 to another shaving brush manufacturer, but Coates remained with David Carter & Francis Woodhouse the previous Simpsons owners. On 18 May 2010 the company was purchased by TGS Products Ltd and relocated to Hungerford, West Berkshire. The first new products are due to be manufactured in late June 2010.