Sugg Sport and Jack Archers
Sugg Sport, once a veritable lynchpin of city centre sports trading on The Moor (as well as having another outlet in Doncaster), sadly closed for good in the eyar 2000. The store had been a go-to outlet for anything sports related, and the brand can trace its origins back to sporting legacy: the ancestors of the business’ founders include Derbyshire cricketing legend Walter Sugg and his brother Frank Sugg.
The brothers opened a sports shop at 32 Lord Street, Liverpool, with another branch at 10 North Street, Liverpool and for 12 years from 1894 to 1905 issued Sugg’s Cricket Annual. A 1906 advertising poster gives the following information:
“Frank Sugg Ltd Lord Street Sheffield branches 54 Snig Hill Sheffield, 8 Queen Street Cardiff, 4 New Station Street Leeds, suppliers of Boundarie, Jessop and Invinsa cricket bats.
They added more shops and also had a manufacturing company specialising in cricket bats and other sporting equipment. However at some point the two brothers went their different ways by establishing two companies – Frank Sugg Ltd and HBB Sugg Ltd. The HBB are the initials of Walter’s son. This occurred before the deaths of the two brothers in 1931 (they died within eight days of one another). HHB Suggs relocated in 1927 to 28 Angel Street as “Sheffield Athletic Outfitters and Wireless Dealers”. This may indicate that the reason for the split was purely commercial. Walter wanted to diversify into wirelesses whilst Frank may have wanted to remain just a sports outfitter. Another possibility is that they had a difference of opinion with regard to the location of the business. At his death, Frank lived in Liverpool whilst brother Walter was based in Sheffield.
Frank Sugg was a true fan of Liverpool F.C. and most likely the provider of the shirts the club used for the first 10/20 years of our existence. As well as many people buying their first pair of boots or cricket pads, stars were drawn to the Sheffield shops many years down the line – one picture shows boxer Naseem Hamed with a young Ryan Rhodes, at age 15, at Sugg Sport, after Ryan won a place on the England training course in July 1992. Local artist Pete McKee has a print called “An Afternoon in Sugg’s”
Jack Archer was the name of another sports out-fitters who had a shop at 90 Bramall Lane, Sheffield. It was situated next to a newsagents which in turn was on the corner of Bramall Lane and Ascot Street. It was of course more or less adjacent to the home of Sheffield United FC. One local shopper remembers going in to buy studs for his football boots, they were kept in a sweet jar. In the 1960s they advertised in United match day programs as United’s kit suppliers.
90 – 92 Bramall lane are the subject of a Terry Gorman picture – the shops were demolished many years ago when the local council had plans to turn Bramall Lane into a dual carriageway.
Do you have more information about this that we could add? Are any of the facts wrong? Please get in touch if so.
Source: Nick Robinson, Chris Hobbs
