How it started
History
Brother's history began in 1908 when it was originally called Yasui Sewing Machine Co in Nagoya, Japan. The company name derives from an early sewing machine model, the Brother, which itself was named for the Yasui brothers, Masayoshi and Jitsuichi. In 1954 it entered the home and studio knitting machine market. In 1955, Brother International Corporation (US) was established as its first overseas sales affiliate. In 1958 a European regional sales company was established in Dublin. The corporate name was changed to Brother Industries, Ltd. in 1962. Brother entered the printer market during its long association with Centronics.
In 1968, the company moved its UK headquarters to Audenshaw, Manchester, after acquiring the Jones Sewing Machine Company, a long-established British sewing machine maker.
In March 2005, "Brother Communication Space" (now the Brother Museum), a corporate museum that also serves as a public relations facility, opened in Nagoya.
In December 2011, Brother diversified its offerings by acquiring Nefsis, an innovator in web-based remote collaboration and conferencing software.
Brother competed heavily in the worldwide typewriter market, initially with its personal manual typewriters from its Nagoya factory and later with its own factories abroad (e.g., UK, USA), competing with brands that had dominated the international typewriter market—including with Japan's Silver Seiko Ltd. and others. In the 1960s and 1970s, Brother, along with Japanese companies Silver Seiko and Nakajima, were frequent targets of antidumping campaigns in the United States and Europe—for its low-priced manual typewriters. In November 2012, Brother announced that it had built the last UK-made typewriter at its north Wales factory. It had made 5.9 million typewriters in its Wrexham factory since it opened in 1985. Brother donated the last machine to London's Science Museum.
From Wikipedia’s article on Brother Industries, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2