JD Williams

JD Williams is a British mail-order and online fashion retailer founded in 1859 by James David Williams and based in Manchester, England, where it has long sold clothing, homewares and lingerie to women by catalog and, later, online. It is the oldest company inside N Brown Group, the Manchester retailer that also owns Simply Be and Jacamo, and it aims its range at women aged roughly 45 to 65.

From three mobile shops to the parcel post

James David Williams did not start with a catalog. According to the group's history, he began in 1859 with three mobile shops. The change that made the business came more than twenty years later, when Britain introduced a parcel post service and Williams began sending goods to customers directly instead of waiting for them to find his shops. Wikipedia dates that shift to 1882.

That move put JD Williams among the early British mail-order sellers. For a working- and middle-class customer in a mill town, a parcel service meant that undergarments, corsetry and household goods could be ordered from a catalog and paid for over time, without a trip to a city department store. The format suited intimate apparel in particular. A catalog offered privacy, and it offered a range of sizes that a small local draper rarely kept in stock.

How JD Williams became N Brown

The company that grew around JD Williams became N Brown Group, which became a listed company on the London Stock Exchange and a familiar name in British home shopping. In its later form the group organized itself around brands aimed at particular customers. Simply Be launched in 1999 with a focus on inclusive sizing. Jacamo followed in 2007 for men. JD Williams kept the older, more mature customer, and in 2018 it was relaunched as "JD Williams: The Life Store," with homeware and lifestyle goods given more space alongside fashion.

The physical estate went the other way. N Brown closed all of its brick-and-mortar stores by August 2018. Its operations now run from Manchester's Northern Quarter, with warehousing and distribution in Oldham and Glossop, a short drive from where the business began.

Figleaves and the group's lingerie bet

The group's clearest move into intimates came in 2010, when it bought Figleaves.com for £11.5 million. Figleaves, founded in 1998 by Daniel Nabarro and Michael Ross, had been the first internet retailer to specialize in lingerie, and it had expanded to the United States in 2002. It was also slow to make money: Figleaves did not turn a UK profit until 2012, fourteen years after launch.

Under N Brown it ran as a separate site for another decade. In February 2021 the group announced that Figleaves.com would close and that its business would be folded into SimplyBe.co.uk. The lingerie expertise stayed in the group, but the standalone specialist name did not.

The JD Williams lingerie customer

The bra and knickers drawer at JD Williams follows from the customer it targets. A woman in her fifties or sixties is often shopping for support, coverage and comfort ahead of fashion, and the categories that matter in that market are the full cup bra, the minimizer, the non-wired bra and the full brief, with control briefs and shapewear close behind. These are the garments a catalog retailer has sold in quantity since the corsetry era, updated in fabric and fit but not in purpose.

What we could not confirm from JD Williams' own site, which did not load when we checked, is its current lingerie brand list or size range. We have left those out rather than guess.

Pandemic losses and a private owner

The last few years were hard. N Brown reported a 40 percent drop in sales in March 2020 as the pandemic hit and suspended its dividend that August. Group revenue for 2024 was reported at £400.6 million. In February 2025 N Brown was taken private by the Alliance family, ending its run as a listed company.

Some 166 years after the mobile shops, JD Williams is back in private hands, still run from Manchester and still selling to a customer who would rather have her bras delivered to the door than hunt for her size on a high street.

Last updated October 7, 2026