Riley

E.J. Riley, later Riley Leisure and just Riley, is a British sporting goods brand founded in 1878 by Edward John Riley, an Irish expatriate living in Manchester, England. History E.J. Riley started as a local chain of sports retail stores, before branching out into manufacturing in the 1880s. The company first gained fame as a cricket equipment maker, and has been described as the world's largest manufacturer of cricket bats at the time. From the 1890s, the brand expanded its range to a variety of sports and indoor games, including golf, tennis, lawn bowls, and billiards, the latter becoming its main calling card around 1910. It acquired rights to use Crystalate plastic in its early products, and later marketed a proprietary compound called "Ri-leene". As its manufacturing business outgrew its retail division by a wide margin, E.J. Riley sold its shops in the early 1920s to focus on its Accrington factory. Founder Riley died in 1926, but the company kept expanding through various acquisitions, and eventually went public in 1977 amidst the British snooker boom of the era.