Big news here, the staff at howies ‘liked it so much that they bought back the company!’

We’ve just spoken to the people over at clothing company howies and they have some big news. You may remember that they were bought by Timberland back in 2006, who were then subsequently bought out by VF (Vans amongst others). Well now the howies staff have bought back the company from VF. I have no idea how much a company like howies costs to buy (there must be some kind of investors involved we would imagine). Along the way there have been some pretty major changes at howies, original founders David and Claire Hieatt leaving being the most obvious. But we have been assured that howies is “all about the bike”.

Lets hope that this means good things for the company. They have never strayed far from their original core beliefs, but going back to basics by running the company themselves (with no ‘big man’ t answer to) has to be a positive thing.

Here’s the Press Release (as such)…well a blog post.

BLOG POST

As of January 1st, howies got small again.

When we were sold to Timberland in 2006 we we became a tiny part of a $2 billion company and that was not easy.

When VF bought Timberland last September we became a miniscule part of a $10 Billion corporation, and that was never going to work.

So while everybody was crunching the big numbers, the howies management team quietly bought the business back.

We thank VF for giving us the opportunity to be small again.

It could be big.