Shoppers at the Taikoo Li mall in Chengdu can choose the colour of a Barbour jacket and add an embroidered design or monogram through the My Barbour service.

They choose the size, outer colour, corduroy collar, tartan lining and pocket embroidery.

Barbour sends the orders to its factory in South Shields, where the jackets are made by hand before being returned to Chengdu for collection. Until then, the company had offered the service only in the UK.

The service reflects a larger change in Barbour's business. Overseas sales exceeded UK sales for the first time since Barbour began reporting UK and overseas turnover separately in 2019.

In the year to April 2025, Barbour sold £179.1m of clothing outside the UK and £171.8m at home. The shift has been gradual: the UK accounted for 55 per cent of turnover in 2019, but 49 per cent in 2025.

Across the group, turnover rose 9 per cent to £350.8m in the year to April 2025. Pre-tax profit reached £55.6m, up from £45.8m a year earlier.

A jacket for generations

Company founder John Barbour started the business in South Shields in 1894, supplying oilskins to sailors, fishermen and dockers on the Tyne.

The need for weatherproof clothing was not confined to the North East. Barbour's company history says its mail-order catalogue was reaching customers in Chile, South Africa, Hong Kong and the Falkland Islands by 1917.

Barbour introduced its re-waxing and repair service in 1921, then launched Barbour International for motorcyclists in 1936.

Actor Steve McQueen wore one at the International Six Day Trial in 1964, an image the company still uses for the line.

Royal Warrants followed in 1974, 1982 and 1987, and King Charles III granted a further warrant in May 2024.

Company chair Dame Margaret Barbour designed the Bedale in 1980 and the Beaufort in 1983. Both remain recognisable more than 40 years later, and Barbour still makes them in South Shields.

Its repair service helps keep decades-old jackets in use and allows them to be passed down through families while the same designs remain on sale. The company itself remains under fifth-generation family control.

In the 1980s, the Bedale and Beaufort moved from country clothing into urban fashion as part of the Sloane Ranger look adopted by young, upper-class Londoners.

That fashion association did not last. Profits fell from £19.8m in 1995 to about £2.5m in 2001, according to a Management Today profile published in 2003.

Group managing director Steve Buck joined Barbour in 2000 and led the commercial recovery. He remains in the role. Barbour expanded beyond wax into knitwear, quilts and tailoring, and opened its own shops to present the wider range.

The jackets did not disappear with the trend. They returned as part of the indie look in the 2000s and remain current in cities. British Vogue said the Beaufort now appears in Soho bars as readily as on country estates.

Building the international business

The Bedale and Beaufort have stayed recognisable. Collaborations have put Barbour countrywear on runways and into streetwear, finding new customers for familiar designs.

Fashion designer Alexa Chung inherited her first Barbour from her mother. She later described wearing it with minidresses and loafers as a way of combining her country and city styles.

In 2024 she became creative director of The Edit by Alexa, a Barbour capsule collection. Other recent partners include Supreme, Erdem, Baracuta and Feng Chen Wang, whose collection went into Barbour stores worldwide in January 2026.

In China, Barbour sells the same jackets as outdoor clothing and British heritage fashion. The Chengdu concept store brings the two together.

Barbour has also expanded the retail network needed to sell that appeal. It opened flagships in Tokyo and Milan in 2023 and stores in five Chinese cities across 2023 and 2024.

In September 2024 it signed an exclusive distribution deal with Apparel Group covering all six Gulf Cooperation Council states. The first store opened in Dubai in spring 2025, alongside a dedicated summer collection. In the United States, Barbour moved its Georgetown store in Washington to a larger two-floor site.

The operating model is mixed. Barbour owns subsidiaries in Germany, the United States and Singapore and uses exclusive distributors in other markets. The Gulf agreement gives it coverage across six countries through one partner with local retail experience.

The strongest gains have come outside North America. European sales rose from £44.0m in 2019 to £93.1m in 2025, an increase of 111 per cent. Sales in the rest of the world, which includes the Gulf and much of Asia, rose from £10.4m to £31.1m.

North American sales grew by 20 per cent over the same six years, from £45.9m to £54.9m. The 2025 figure remained below the £56.1m recorded in 2023.

That makes Barbour increasingly international, but its growth is not evenly global. Europe accounted for just over half of overseas sales in 2025 and supplied nearly two thirds of the overseas growth recorded since 2019.

Sales elsewhere are rising from a much smaller base, although those investments have had less time to feed through. Barbour opened stores in five Chinese cities during 2023 and 2024, and its first Gulf store followed in Dubai in spring 2025.

Financial performance

Growth has not been even. Turnover fell 6.2 per cent to £321.8m in the year to April 2024. The directors described it as a planned reduction intended to support later growth.

The wholesale channel drove much of the recovery in 2025 and remains more exposed to retailers' ordering cycles than Barbour's own stores.

Gross margin rose to 49.7 per cent from 48.1 per cent in the year to April 2025. The directors said Barbour did not pass all of its higher costs on through prices. Operating profit rose from £39.6m to £49.5m and profit after tax reached £42m.

Barbour maintains a conservative financial position. It held £119.2m in cash at the year end, excluding short-term investments, and earned £6.2m of interest on its reserves.

The interest was equivalent to about 11 per cent of pre-tax profit. The board recommended a £30m dividend, unchanged from the previous year.

Production in South Shields

Barbour's international growth is now reaching production in South Shields. Average production headcount fell from 142 in 2018 to 130 in 2025 while the group as a whole grew from 968 people to 1,178. The net increase came entirely from distribution and administration.

In August 2026, the company said it was recruiting about 40 trainee machinists in South Shields in response to what it called unprecedented global demand. It has opened the Barbour Academy, an on-site training centre, to teach them.

Five people were already in training when the recruitment was announced. At that scale, the recruitment would be equivalent to roughly 30 per cent of Barbour's average 2025 production headcount.

The academy was created because Barbour could no longer recruit enough people with the required sewing skills. Recruitment is running through employment agencies and the charities Smart Works North East and Suitability.

New machinists start on tote bags. Basic training takes about three months, and it can take up to a year before recruits are ready to work on a Bedale.

Barbour's next phase of growth is likely to follow the same pattern. Take the same recognisable jacket into more international cities, then give local customers new ways to wear and personalise it.

Overseas sales have already overtaken UK sales, while recruitment in South Shields ties that expansion back to the place where the brand began. The test will be whether Barbour can keep making a 130-year-old brand current without making it look like something else.