Part 1 - The move from faggots to sport
The story of Gobra began in 1980 in a school playground in the Yorkshire village of Upper Micklefield, where the King family had lived for six generations.
 Once the proud owners of a cotton-mill, as the industry declined the family had turned its interests elsewhere and was now a big player in pork, producing the renowned "King's Famous Faggots", but also pies, sausages, bacon, ham and scratchings, which were sold throughout the UK as far south as Luton. Quality and value for money were the watchwords at King's Pork Products, and their slogan "A meal fit for a King and a King's prepared it for you!" was a household word throughout Yorkshire.
One summer afternoon, Joseph King found himself watching his daughter Victoria and her schoolmates trying to qualify for a place in the West Riding School Netball finals against the team from Lower Micklefield. A busy man, Joseph normally let his wife Diana do the parenting, but on this occasion a reporter from the local press was attending and King's Famous Faggots were sponsoring the after-match tea, so Joseph intended saying a few words as the children tucked in.
As he watched his 16 year old daughter and her friends throw themselves into their game of netball, Joseph couldn't help noticing that the 'bigger' girls were clearly in some difficulty when it came to jumping for the ball, a fact he quickly attributed to inadequate support from their undergarments. Victoria's team lost the match, but Joseph left the school as excited as he had been in years, and for several nights he couldn't sleep as the game of netball played out in his mind over and over again.
 He would wake up and doodle on a scrap of paper, until one day he felt he had the solution. He took his doodlings to Mrs Elsie Wiggins, the last surviving employee of the old King's cotton-mill, by now 83 years old, but still the best seamstress in Yorkshire. With her love of cotton and impeccable stitching technique, together with some (now patented) wizardry in elastic, Elsie ran up the first ever 'Gobra' in a 38C, and Joseph was able to begin field - or in this case, playground - trials.
The Gobra was an instant hit. Indeed, word from the changing rooms was that the girls had been fighting among themselves to wear the only available sample. So, with the help of Diana who was always willing to take the girls' measurements and conduct the fittings no matter how busy she was, they had Elsie turn out another six so the whole team could wear one.
Upper Micklefield's results improved immediately. Their Goal Shooter, a tall, statuesque girl called Tracy, whose height had won her the post more than her accuracy, could all of a sudden barely miss! Wearing their primeval 'Gobras', the girls were now unhampered, balanced and comfortable, and could concentrate 100% on their game. They moved rapidly up the West Yorkshire junior league tables, winning their division in a nail-biting final. The team entered the North of England tournament, and reached the semi-final, with Joseph, the attentive and hands-on Diana and the ever-faithful Elsie following them everywhere, tweaking their design with a stitch here and a tuck there, in the high-pressure competitive atmosphere of regional amateur netball.
But such sudden and spectacular success could not pass unnoticed. The secret of Upper Micklefield's miraculous form had been getting harder to keep and Joseph had found himself the victim of a whispering campaign by envious rival coaches, suggesting that he was using artificial means to help his players.
 During the winter, he pondered the future. He had for some time been worrying about trends in food, and in particular the fondness of the younger generation for burgers and fried chicken. Faggots and scratchings had their following among the traditional clientele, but Joseph was nothing if not a realist. He could see that franchised fast-food outlets, "TV" meals and the growing power of the mass-retailers would soon be a major threat to KPP, and he would have to choose between investing in real estate and new food technology or see his business slowly eroded by the flood of cheap pork imports, which consumers somehow found just as acceptable as his proud, Yorkshire-bred products.
But as well as being a realist, Joseph was a visionary, and he had spotted the trend towards a healthier, sporting, more outdoor lifestyle. He was convinced that the future lay in his embryonic sports underwear business, rather than in pork. While the cashflows from faggots were still strong, he would build up the brassiere business, and when he was ready he would sell KPP and focus all his efforts on harnessing the power of his underwear. Joseph knew in his bones it was right. After all, he had made the successful transition from cotton to pork, so why not faggots and scratchings to bras?
Part 2 - Putting Gobra on the map
 A man of action, once his decision was taken Joseph wasted no time. He applied for a patent on the brassiere, and set about planning for an expansion of production and sales. He needed a whole army of Elsies, but Yorkshire couldn't provide. Undaunted, he made enquiries in the London rag trade, and made several overseas trips to North Africa and South-East Asia. By the late spring, Joseph had almost fifty pairs of eager hands learning from Elsie the tricks of the trade which went into making a King's "Netball Queen" Brassiere (as Joseph had decided to call his revolutionary garment) an uplifting experience for all who bought one. The world of netball lay at his feet, and orders came in from the four corners of the globe.
 In the summer, he took on another thirty workers, but still there was a waiting list for the bras. Joseph was also beginning to notice that the "Netball Queen" was making inroads in other sports. The North Yorkshire Ladies Volleyball team were early converts. In June, an order from the Wensleydale Harriers athletics club taught him that pole-vaulters and high-hurdlers had adopted his product, and in July the Sacramento Monarchs Women's Basketball team ordered a season's supply.
Then, in September 1981, came a moment that would shape the whole future of the business.
 The English Amateur Stroke Play Championship was won that year by Emily Buxham, a one handicap teenager from Coventry, who was also a keen netball player. Famous golf writer Donald Steel referred to her "fine balance and poise, with an effortless grace through the ball" and predicted great things for her. Emily, who was generously built, naturally wore her "Netball Queen" bra for golf, and after taking the title she was effusive in her praise for the role her "article of intimate apparel" had played in the victory. The story spread like wildfire through the golfing world, and Joseph was swamped with orders for the "Golfing bra", as the press were now calling it. He hired and trained as fast as he could to keep up with demand.
 He also decided that it was time for KPP's "Sportswear Division" to stand alone, in order to promote itself more effectively. In November 1981 "The Golfing Brassiere Manufacturing Company Ltd" was founded, and its operations were transferred into another of the Kings' disused cotton-mills. This had the double advantage of avoiding a slight tendency for the bras to smell of pork fat until their first wash, and of allowing the ladies who made the bras to work uninterrupted by ribald comments from the men on the adjacent pork scratching lines.
A year after taking his momentous decision, Joseph was a truly happy man that Christmas. Not only was he now firmly established in a growth industry, but the younger Kings, who had shown little interest in the pork business, were all keen at sports, so the opportunity to bring his children into his burgeoning enterprise as they reached working age opened up before him.
"The Golfing Brassiere Manufacturing Company Ltd" went from strength to strength. Although Emily Buxham did not pursue her promising career in golf, choosing instead the vocation of schoolteacher - she later became Games Mistress and netball coach at Roedean - she did pass on her underwear secret to another teenage golfing prodigy from Coventry, Laura Davies.
 Winner of the 1983 English Intermediate Championship, the 1984 Welsh Open Stroke Play Championship, the South Eastern Championship in both 1983 and 1984, Laura was also a member of the Great Britain and Ireland Curtis Cup team in 1984. Her rivals marvelled at her athletic, powerful swing, and were constantly amazed at how a big girl could maintain such excellent balance. When she turned pro in April 1985, Laura was the first official professional staff player for the "The Golfing Brassiere Manufacturing Company Ltd", which had hitherto focussed mainly on the amateur game.
 It was this change in emphasis which prompted the King's daughter Victoria, who had recently joined the family firm as Marketing Director, to persuade her father to rename the company "Gobra Ltd.", a contraction of the original name, with a snappier, more marketable ring to it.
Gobra, as we know it today, was born.
Part 3 - Diversification
 By the mid-90's, Gobra was firmly established as the leading purveyor of technologically advanced undergarments in the world of female sport. The Gobra bra, with subtle modifications to the stiching and elastic to take into account the varying stresses imposed by different sporting disciplines, had been adapted to nearly all women's sports with the same degree of success. The whole family was now grown-up and involved in running the business, so with his mind free from the day-to-day management, Joseph had time to imagine further uses for his by now patented "Double Fulcrum Control and Equilibrium Principle, as applied to Ladies' Foundation Garments (UK Patent GB2165047)".
Although not a golfer himself, he was fascinated to read how various club manufacturers were trying to cope with the problems of torque in golf club shafts and broadening the "sweet spot" of clubheads. Were these not, he wondered, just issues of imbalance, where the "moment" of one force is not offset by another?
  Since the graduation, with honours, in Engineering of his twin sons Raymond (left) and Duncan (right), Joseph had set up an in-house "R&D" department to work on adapting his technology to create new products. He shared his thoughts with them and, working in conditions of the utmost secrecy, they began development of revolutionary golf equipment.
Testing the products was a challenge if they were to preserve secrecy, so top professionals were hired to try out the prototype clubs in a purpose-built indoor driving range. Each pro was asked to sign a confidentiality agreement, in return for which they were guaranteed a period of exclusivity using the clubs on tour.
 Development of the clubs was not easy. Used to working in cotton and elastic, Joseph's technicians had many problems with steel, carbon fibre and beryllium. The clubs were either too heavy to be practical or, if lighter, prone to breaking with heavy usage. Several workers were injured during testing by flying clubheads which simply snapped off at impact. But after eight years of effort and huge investment, the Gobra "Twin Cup" driver was finally unveiled to an astonished golfing world. The club is currently awaiting official approval for tournament play from the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews and the United States Golf Association, but as soon as this is received, many top professionals, including world no. 1 Tiger Woods, are expected to play the new driver, which promises an unrivalled combination of distance and accuracy off the tee.
 Joseph's fundamental principle has also been adapted to the putter, and numerous tournaments have already been won by the Gobra "Twin Cup", whose perfect balance permits uncanny judgement of distance and pinpoint accuracy. The foremost exponent of this putter is none other than the world's no. 1 woman golfer, Annika Sörenstam.
 Sportswear development has not been forgotten, however. As a result of a promotional visit to Japan, Joseph accepted the challenge of producing baseball mitts for the Japanese women's baseball league. Because of the player's unusually small hands, they found traditional gloves unsatisfactory, but Gobra's proprietary technology overcame that problem with such success that several US mens' major league teams are now adopting the product.
Part 4 - The Future
Despite his phenomenal success, the flame of ambition still burns very strongly in Joseph King's heart. Since the very first 'Gobra' run up by Elsie Wiggins in 1980 for his daughter's netball team, he has dedicated his life to making sport easier for the participant through innovative sports equipment.
 Joseph is determined to bring to mens' undergarments the same comfort and mechanical support - leading to superior sporting performance - that he has achieved for the ladies, and field testing of the revolutionary Gobra Golf Underpants is already underway. Golfing trials during 2003's major championships have clearly demonstrated that the underpants significantly enhance playing ability in a sport where good balance is crucial. Similar benefits are expected in tennis and snooker, as well as gymnastics and Formula One racing, to name but a few of the other disciplines currently being evaluated.
But Joseph and Diana, their children, and the two thousand employees of Gobra around the world, will not stop there. The Gobra research laboratories are full of exciting, innovative equipment projects to enhance the pleasure of sportswomen and men everywhere. You have our support. We hope we can count on yours.
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