About Farmiloe

About
The Company

The company, Farmiloe and Farmiloe (WBS) Ltd. is the trading company of the Farmiloe group of companies continuing the business of selling bathroom fixtures and fittings that was started by George Farmiloe in 1823. Farmiloe is an independent distributor working with retail showrooms to offer the world’s finest bathroom brands.  Offering expert advice, training, deep stocks and reliable delivery, Farmiloe continues to build strong, successful relationships with its customers.

Heritage

The Farmiloe name is well-known in the bathroom industry but many are not aware of our heritage and wealth of in-house experience.

Farmiloe & Farmiloe was founded by George Farmiloe and has been in operation since 1823.  The business has remained in the capable hands of family members to this day and is currently owned by Tim Farmiloe.  The company has gone from strength to strength, adapting with changing demands. 

Quality, Design, Sustainability

Farmiloe has a long history of importing goods from Europe.  At the turn of the century, Farmiloe made the decision to concentrate on selling European bathroom brands .  At a time when mass produced bathroom products are sold at low prices, Farmiloe has stayed committed to sourcing the highest quality and best designed products made by companies interested in advancing sustainable manufacturing.

Family-run businesses in Europe which own and run their factories with personal concern for quality, design and the environment, are in harmony with Farmiloe’s vision.  Farmiloe is proud to be working with some of the most prestigious bathroom brands in Europe – Catalano, Bette, GSI, EmporioBagno, Elements and Viega.

Working with Farmiloe 

Our belief that the bathroom is a room in the home that should be wisely invested in, will continue to influence the curating of exceptional brands for our brand portfolio.  Integrity, honesty and reliability is at the heart of what we do. 

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The History Of Farmiloe

  • The History Of Farmiloe

    How it all began

    George Farmiloe the Elder set up a glass cutting business in Clerkenwell – Farmiloe G. and Co. St John’s Lane.  In 1829 he was established as a Glass Cutter, Lead Merchant and Dealer in oil and turpentine.

    1823
  • The History Of Farmiloe

    Expanding Farmiloe

    The window glass business moved from St John’s Lane to St John Street, a busy thoroughfare. George Farmiloe was able to build up a considerable complex of properties which became the firm’s headquarters, showrooms, offices and warehouse.  The Westminster branch, which eventually became T. & W. Farmiloe Limited, was established around about 1850.

    1830s
  • The History Of Farmiloe

    Survival and Success

    Plumbing, glass, and building materials were needed in enormous quantities for a city
    like London which was rapidly expanding and upgrading its built fabric.  George Farmiloe the Younger took over much
    of the running of the business. Under George Farmiloe the Younger’s leadership, a new warehouse was built, catalogues were issued and he scaled up operations.

    Following a fire at the warehouse on 34 St John Street, Farmiloe remarkably maintained business continuity.  In slightly over a year, the firm had a brand new warehouse and headquarters on St John Street, more efficient loading and unloading capability and a building frontage that reflected the firm’s success. 

    1860s
  • The History Of Farmiloe

    The Catalogue

    An 1872 catalogue shows how the product range had expanded since the catalogue issued in 1869. The pages were roughly twice the size; the 404 items of 1869 had grown to 815 by 1872.  There was a rapid growth in the number of items sold in a period in which the variety of products available through technical innovation and mass manufacturing constantly grew.

    The overall quality was finer and the publication also noted extra lists and specific catalogues available. It appears that almost all of the product lines were offered from stock.  George Farmiloe and Sons was at the forefront of supplying household goods for modern convenience in Victorian homes. 

    1870s
  • The History Of Farmiloe

    Marketing and Achievements

    By 1880 the catalogue included a full range of products for plumbers including cocks, brasswork, closets, valves, basins, lavatories (meaning basins and furniture to
    hold them), toilets, cisterns, tanks, hose-reels, garden engines and even fountains.  The catalogue was revised
    again in 1887 as Marketing became more of a focus during the period. 

    From 1851 after the Great Exhibition, there was a move towards Specialist exhibitions,
    with a cluster being focused on hygiene in the 1870s and 1880s.  At the International Health Exhibition in 1884, George Farmiloe and Sons won two bronze medals; T & W Farmiloe had been awarded a gold, two silver, and a bronze medal in the ‘water supply and
    purification category’.  In 1885, George Farmiloe and Sons received a bronze medal at the Antwerp exhibition and in 1886, won a medal at the International Exhibition of Navigation, Commerce and Industry in Liverpool.

    1880s
  • The History Of Farmiloe

    The Rise of Technology

    In October 1891, George Farmiloe and Sons would issue another general catalogue, as the product lines offered by the firm continued to expand. The relentless march of new consumer products continued as technology provided all sorts of uses for energy. Garden house boilers could heat a country house orangery or a market gardener’s hothouse. Gas meters monitored usage.

    There was an apparently boundless scope for bringing such products to market. The new catalogue was hefty and handsome: 3545 products were numbered over 706 pages.

    1890s
  • The History Of Farmiloe

    Innovation In The Industry

    In 1901 Thomas Meakin Farmiloe took control of George Farmiloe and Sons Limited. In 1903 Thomas patented Oceanic Glass - patterned glass designed by Thomas Meakin Farmiloe.

    This was ‘architectural glass’ having a figured or patterned surface impressed by rollers during the process of manufacture. This was often called ‘art glass’, ‘frosted glass’, ‘privacy glass’ or ‘obscured glass’. Oceanic would have been suitable for use in windows and doors internal and external, especially bathrooms given that this particular design incorporated sea shells and starfishes arranged around slightly abstracted patterns of seaweed and sand.

    1900s
  • The History Of Farmiloe

    New Opportunities

    During the second half of the nineteenth century, ready-mixed paint was sold in tin cans, but it was often so badly formulated that the contents would settle into a hard mass at
    the bottom of the container.

    George Farmiloe and Sons Ltd innovated in paint, and had a variety of brands and trades. In the Farmiloe offering of 1915, there were new products such as Filocol designed for ceilings, and Zingessol ‘Perfected Washable Water Paint’. Paint was becoming easier to apply but more difficult to make. Another brand was Stargloss. The emphasis was on implying novelty and modernity rather than any connection with old London. 

    During the First World War and the interwar period, George Farmiloe & Sons Limited was a profitable business.

    1915
  • The History Of Farmiloe

    From Strength to Strength

    Tim Farmiloe Senior joined George Farmiloe and Sons Ltd shortly after World War Two, alongside his father Kenneth Meakin Farmiloe.  Tim Farmiloe Senior’s job was calculating the costs of paint formulae to price for selling. Tim subsequently became more involved in the purchasing of lead which was a crucial ingredient of paint. 

    Due to a labour shortage after the war, new arrivals to the country were employed to make up the workforce. 1947 was a ‘record’ year for George Farmiloe and Sons Ltd’s profits.

    1940s
  • The History Of Farmiloe

    Sanitary Ware Focus

    Tim Farmiloe Senior was appointed to the board as a Director and also as General Manager.  Mechanisation arrived in the warehouse, starting with a hydraulic crane.  

    After the sale of the T. & W. Farmiloe Limited paint interests in 1960, the various Farmiloe businesses focused heavily on sanitary ware and building merchanting.

    1957
  • The History Of Farmiloe

    Sanitary Ware Specialists

    There was an end to glass distribution with a change to focusing on sanitary ware, a switch to a factoring model, and departing the St John site. Factoring involved bulk breaking by enabling efficient full-load deliveries from the manufacturer to one site, and then in small loads to the merchant and retail customers.

    George Farmiloe and Sons Limited and T. & W. Farmiloe Limited came together to form Farmiloe & Farmiloe (WBS) Ltd.

    Tim Farmiloe Senior concluded that basins and pedestals were popular, and attractive deals were available to merchants taking large quantities.

    1978
  • The History Of Farmiloe

    Known as Farmiloe

    By 1989 the business was doing phenomenally well and a competitor put their business on the market: D.J. & S.Morris. This purchase solved the space problem.  D.J. & S.Morris operated from a Mitcham site, which Farmiloe rented with the right to purchase if the landlord decided to sell.

    This gave the business considerable room for storage in a large former Pirelli warehouse, as well as enabling a return to Mitcham where there had been family varnish works.

    A bonus was access to the Bette brand. From this point onwards, the firm was styled as ‘Farmiloe’.

    1989
  • The History Of Farmiloe

    The Glamorous Era

    The firm moved out of the Farmiloe building in Clerkenwell in 2000 and it was used as a filming location, although it also served as an occasional wedding venue and artistic space.

    Many extremely well-known productions were filmed on location at the Farmiloe Building, as the St John Street premises developed its own identity separate from the trading activities. Some of the more well-known productions include the three most recent
    Batman films - Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight
    Returns (2015), with director Christopher Nolan also filming Inception (2010) there. The site also featured in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) where it became a safehouse in an abandoned warehouse.

    2000
  • The History Of Farmiloe

    A New Brand

    Farmiloe formed a 50:50 relationship with NoCode, a brand importing contemporary,
    European styled products. In September 2008, Farmiloe took complete control of NoCode and the brand was subsumed in the Farmiloe company. The NoCode name was later changed to EmporioBagno, marking its close association with Italian style and
    manufacturing.

    2007
  • The History Of Farmiloe

    Luxury European Brands

    Following a change in the financial environment and intense competition leading to low profit margins, it was time for the company to move
    away from the original suppliers to the sanitary ware factoring business, ending the longstanding relationships with English manufacturers.

    Tim Farmiloe Junior, working with John Horner, who had joined the business when D.J. & S.Morris was bought, started to look for new suppliers in Europe. The portfolio of brands offered by Farmiloe in this period would come to place a
    strong emphasis on style.  The Catalano and GSI sanitary ware brands, along with Bette made a formidable offering.

    2008
  • The History Of Farmiloe

    The Future of Farmiloe

    The company today still focuses on European brands with quality, design and sustainability being key factors.

    Farmiloe is proud to be working with bathroom retailers across the UK.

    Today

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