The Start of Anthony A. Barker Ltd.

Anthony Barker arrived in his Battersea office one day to find that he was working for Fred Pickles, Chairman of the 1940 Group. He was quickly promoted to Group sales Manager with approximately 80 shops and 5 Laundries to promote. Later that same year Anthony left the 1940 group and joined Marlow Cleaners run by an ebullient Irishman. In 1961 Anthony left Marlow Cleaners and with three friends, Tony Stevens, Ian Tuson and Simon Murray, opened Harlequin Cleaners and later Commodore Cleaners subsequently to become Columbine Cleaners. In 1972 Anthony took three shops in Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch founding Anthony A. Barker Ltd.

The Move South

Looking for larger premises with which to operate commercial dry cleaning, Anthony came across a small laundry in Bournemouth. The Argyle Laundry, as it was then known, had existed since 1861 providing domestic laundry services to households and latterly to hotels and guesthouses in the area. The premises were not large enough and the capital did not exist to pursue commercial laundry activities in the same way that most laundries were at that time.

The End of Domestic Laundry?

Thousands of small laundries had survived on the door-to-door domestic service, but the numbers had been decimated with the advent of the domestic washing machine, and by the considerable financial benefits to be gained by larger laundries in concentrating their efforts on linen rental and thus stopping the domestic service. Domestic laundry, the provision of a weekly washing service to the public, with the massive variety of different items and finishes, required at least four times the amount of labour and plant as were needed to provide commercial laundry services.

In 1950 there were 6000 laundries in the United Kingdom. Today there are a mere 600.

Keeping The Traditional Alive

Undaunted by these facts, Anthony and his wife Valerie decided that the future of the Anthony A. Barker laundry lay in the provision of high quality Domestic laundry services not just to the general public through door-to-door collection and delivery but also to a wider market by supplying the service to dry cleaners. After all, this was a market not unfamiliar to them.

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