A Huddersfield-founded sports brand, started in 1817, best known for footballs and also making kit, boots and rugby and netball equipment.
Mitre makes sports equipment and clothing, mainly for football. Its range includes balls, kit, boots and gloves, and it also supplies rugby union and basketball balls, netball balls and rings, and bags and water bottles. Its Delta ball, with its chevron pattern, became a trademark in the 1980s and returned as the English Football League's match ball in 2017-18, and it is long associated with the FA Cup Final. It is a subsidiary of the Pentland Group, a British family-owned company.
The business began in 1817 when Benjamin Crook opened a tannery in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. It moved from leather goods to sports equipment and clothing and, according to the National Football Museum, was renamed Mitre in 1949 after the founder's friendship with a local bishop. Tom Finney endorsed Mitre balls and shin pads in the late 1950s, Denis Law became its first official spokesperson in 1964, and it became the FA's official ball supplier in 1966 and the Football League's in 1976. It also supplied the first balls of the Premier League era, and has been official ball supplier to the 1987 Rugby World Cup. Our pages did not give a mission statement, so we have not invented one.
Wikipedia lists Mitre's headquarters as Wakefield, with the company founded in Huddersfield. A 2018 report said its parent, Pentland Brands, was moving the Mitre and Canterbury sales, marketing, finance, product and innovation teams to its East Midlands headquarters at NG2 Business Park in Nottingham, which suggests that the brand's central teams may now work from Nottingham. We could not confirm where staff sit today.
On culture, Pentland said the 2018 move would help it manage its brands better and offer staff wider career opportunities across several brands, and that it was launching academies to build specialist skills. Sean Hastings, global marketing director, said there was "great talent across the region". Mitre has a long record of community links, including George Weah's 2004 partnership with Mitre to donate footballs to children in Liberia and Iraq. These are company-reported or press-reported details.
People at a brand like Mitre work in product design and development, sales to clubs and retailers, marketing and sponsorship, finance, supply chain and customer service. If you love football, rugby or netball and are interested in how a ball is designed, tested and chosen by a league, then a sports equipment brand with two centuries of history can be a good place to learn.
Website: www.mitre.com
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