Founded 1987 Number of employees 140 | CEO Jeremy Oldland (1999–) Type of business Private | |
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Industry Retail Manufacturing Clothing Headquarters LaSalle, Quebec, Montreal, Canada Founders John Oldland, Alice Oldland Profiles | ||
Hatley is a Montreal-based gift and apparel retailer/wholesaler brand founded in 1987 and is best known for its PVC free rain gear and cotton pajamas.
History
John and Alice Oldland started Hatley as a cottage business in the small town of North Hatley, Québec (Canada) in 1986. Alice, an artist, opened a gift store called “The Little Blue House” and painted in her studio on the second floor. To help out local charity events, Alice would donate hand-painted aprons, which were sold at auctions. John decided her designs would appeal to a broader market and he sold an initial 200 of them to kitchen stores the next time he was in Toronto.
When retirement beckoned in 1999, John and Alice handed the reins to their three sons, Chris, Nick and Jeremy. Entrepreneurial like their father, the three boys moved the company from North Hatley to Montréal and quickly transformed and expanded their product range. They developed an extensive children’s line, created women’s sleepwear and expanded into the gift market with napkins, kitchen textiles, mugs and other stuff.
Today, products are sold in approximately 3,300 stores in North America and in over 20 countries. They have a direct to consumer website and 13 corporate stores in North America, with the last one recently opening in Annapolis, Maryland. In 2014 Hatley opened a warehouse in Portsmouth, England to handle the entire UK and European market and the first European store opened in July 2015 in Chiswick, London.