Our company was founded in 1876 by James Rogers and
William Murgatroyd of Bradford, England. They named their
Rhode Island plant Bradford Soap Works. Rhode Island was the center of the textile industry in the new world...just as Bradford, England, was the center of the textile industry in England. Our first product was flake soap for use in scouring wool.
A few years later, another English immigrant opened a soap manufacturing plant in Rhode Island under the same name. Since Messrs. Rogers and Murgatroyd had not registered the name Bradford Soap Works, they re-named their company The Original Bradford Soap Works.
By the 1920's, ownership had succeeded to the McIver family. Although the location of the company's manufacturing facility changed several times, it was always located on one of the large rivers that flowed through Providence.
In 1931, Bradford moved to its present location in West Warwick, Rhode Island.
From its founding in 1876 through the 1940's, Bradford was a manufacturer of industrial grade soap for the textile and paper-making industries. Things changed in the 1950's as we expanded our product line to include value-added finishing products for sale to the same customers who bought our soap. For example: flame retardant treatments for textiles and polyethylene emulsions that provide a glossy finish for paper stock.
Things changed again in the 1960's. With the textile industry moving south - and eventually offshore, and with the paper-making industry moving to the Pacific northwest, Bradford's customer base was slowly but surely leaving New England. A five-story granite mill building can't be moved... so a new business model needed to be developed. Bradford upgraded its soap making operation to produce fine quality toilet soap base and added a down-stream bar soap processing capability.
During the 1970's, Bradford greatly diversified its bar soap customer base. No longer just a cleansing product, bar soap had become a treatment and aromatherapy product as well as a gift and home decorating product. Whereas bar soap was once purchased exclusively at grocery and drug stores, now it was sold in a wide variety of retail settings.
Bradford's ownership and leadership also changed. Allen Howland joined the company in 1946; he was the first member of the Howland family to work at Bradford. The then-owner and CEO of Bradford, Daniel McIver, had both a personal and a business relationship with Allen's father. By the mid-1950's Allen became Bradford's COO and by the late 1960's he acquired a majority of the company's stock.
In 1978, Bradford's current CEO and majority stockholder, John Howland, joined the company. After serving in Vietnam in the late 1960's and then receiving his MBA from Columbia University, John was an Institutional Investor top rated analyst on Wall Street.
THE VALLEY QUEEN MILL
The Valley Queen Mill was one of the numerous textile mills that prospered in Rhode Island from the mid-1800's until the early 1920's. Our mill produced cotton fabrics for the B.B.&R. Knight Company under the Fruit of the Loom trademark.
Located on the south branch of the Pawtuxet River, the mill is a long, five-story "L" shaped structure containing approximately 100,000 square feet of floor space. The granite for the entire complex was quarried from a ledge on the opposite side of the river. The original sections were built in 1835; it was enlarged to its present size in 1889.
We are proud our building is on the Federal Government's National Register of Historic Places. Being good stewards of history is important - so we endeavor to keep the west facing facade of our building looking the same today as it did in the late 1800's
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