Two brothers, a Cheshire town and a contracted name.

Umbro’s story begins in Wilmslow, Cheshire, in 1924. English Wikipedia says the business was started by the brothers Harold and Wallace Humphreys as Humphreys Brothers Limited, working initially out of the family’s pub before moving to a workshop in the town, and that the trading name was changed in the same year. The name is a contraction: “um” from Humphreys and “bro” from brothers. Creative Bloq, writing in May 2024, put the brand’s hundredth birthday on 23 May of that year. When Nike agreed to buy the company in 2007, the BBC described Umbro as Manchester-based, and English Wikipedia still describes it as based in Manchester.

The brothers made football kit — shirts, shorts and socks — and English Wikipedia ties the brand’s early profile to the FA Cup: at the 1934 final, it says, both Manchester City and Portsmouth wore kit designed and made by Umbro. For the 1930s and 1940s the same article lists Sheffield United, Preston North End, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur and Blackpool among the clubs it supplied. In 1952, it says, the British team at the Summer Olympics wore Umbro kit tailored to individual sports, and the arrangement ran for the next two decades.

Other sports and names followed. English Wikipedia dates a tennis line made with the player and designer Ted Tinling to 1957 and says the collaboration lasted three decades; it also names the Manchester United manager Matt Busby as a collaborator in 1959. In 1955, it says, Umbro sold a boys’ set of matching shirt, shorts and socks under the name “Sportswear Xmas Pack,” a replica kit for young supporters.

The national team runs through the story. English Wikipedia says the Football Association’s deal with Umbro was signed in 1954, that England won the 1966 World Cup in Umbro kit, and that after more than a decade with Admiral the team returned to Umbro in 1984. It also says Brazil wore Umbro at the 1958 World Cup, and that Liverpool won the European Cup in 1977, 1978, 1981 and 1984 wearing Umbro kit.

A name dropped from inside the diamond.

The mark that identifies Umbro is the double diamond: two diamonds, one set inside the other. In a May 2024 Creative Bloq article on the brand’s centenary, Craig Burston, a senior lecturer in graphic and media design at London College of Communication, said the earliest versions of the logo carried the brand’s name inside the diamond shape, and that a 1974 redesign introduced the double diamond, which no longer needed the name inside it. He called the double diamond “a beautiful application of simple geometric shapes.”

For the centenary in 2024, Creative Bloq reported, Umbro introduced a logo variant that fills the central diamond with a bold red, without changing the shape of the existing mark; the standard logo stayed in use alongside the centenary version.

The kit itself has carried the identity as much as the logo. English Wikipedia describes the loose, oversized shirt silhouette that Umbro, looking back to outfits of the 1950s, introduced for Tottenham Hotspur at the 1991 FA Cup final. The cut, it says, was initially ridiculed in the British press, then rolled out to Ajax, Inter Milan and Celtic for the 1991–92 season, and adidas made a looser design for Arsenal in response. An updated England kit followed in February 1993, the article says.

Off the pitch, English Wikipedia describes a fashion in the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s for Umbro’s nylon football shorts, with drawstring waistbands and often bright colours, worn as everyday clothing by young people as youth soccer leagues grew. Football boots came later: the same article says the company introduced a boot in the Brazilian market in the mid-1980s, and it names later models including the Stealth and the GT of 2010 and the Geometra of 2011.

English Wikipedia says the brand today concentrates on football and rugby union equipment — kit, boots and casual clothing such as T-shirts and jackets — and its club and national-team deals since 2014 have included Everton, PSV, West Ham United, Schalke 04 and the Jamaica national team, according to the same article.

Design and documentation.

A sportswear mark has to work at very small sizes and at a distance. On a shirt it usually sits on the chest, opposite a club crest or a national badge, and it has to read on a pitch, in a photograph and on a television screen as clearly as it does on a swing tag or a shoebox. That is why so many sportswear identities pair a compact symbol with a wordmark that can be dropped when space runs out.

Many brands also repeat the mark beyond the chest: as a tape running down the sleeve or the side seam, as a band of stripes or shapes on a cuff, or as a pattern woven into the fabric itself. On a team kit those placements share the shirt with the club’s own crest and with a sponsor’s name across the front, so the sportswear brand’s marks have to sit alongside other people’s identities without competing with them.

Each guide below looks at how one brand’s symbol, wordmark and repeated details have changed over time, who has owned the name, and what the documented record says about its history.

From Nike to Iconix.

Umbro was a listed company when Nike made its approach. On 23 October 2007 the BBC reported that Umbro had agreed to be bought by Nike, and quoted Umbro’s chief executive, Steve Makin, saying it would be “a stronger and better business” as part of Nike; the FA’s chief executive, Brian Barwick, said the deal would allow the FA to continue its “strong historical relationship” with Umbro. English Wikipedia says the purchase was completed in February 2008.

On 31 May 2012, Nike later said, it announced its intention to sell Umbro and Cole Haan to concentrate on the Nike, Jordan, Converse and Hurley brands. On 24 October 2012 it announced a definitive agreement to sell Umbro to Iconix Brand Group, the American brand-management company; Iconix’s chief executive, Neil Cole, called Umbro “a true, authentic football brand.” English Wikipedia says the sale was completed in December 2012, and that the FA had announced in September 2012 that future England kits would be made by Nike. Iconix has owned Umbro since 2012.

Iconix itself changed hands. Retail Dive reported on 14 June 2021 that the private equity firm Lancer Capital had agreed to buy Iconix, naming Umbro among its brands, and SGB Media reported on 2 August 2021 that Lancer had completed its tender offer for the shares, with a merger to follow. Lancer Capital has owned Iconix since 2021. In October 2026 the company’s website, under the name Iconix International, lists Umbro among its sports brands.

Iconix works through licensees. English Wikipedia says its European licence for Umbro clothing and products is held by the Scottish company GL Dameck. Sportcal reported on 21 March 2024 that GL Dameck had agreed a professional team sports sub-licence with the British sportswear company Castore, covering the UK, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark from the 2024–25 season, including Umbro-branded kit for Hearts and for the England Rugby men’s and women’s teams.

For a design guide, Umbro shows a mark that dropped its lettering in the 1970s and was recoloured, not redrawn, for its centenary. Compare Nike, which owned Umbro from 2008 to 2012, and adidas, which followed Umbro’s looser 1991 cut at Arsenal, according to English Wikipedia. For this guide we use navy, white and a centenary red with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Umbro’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.