GB Bike Leathers partnership between Bernard Woolmer and Gail Willoughby was formed in 2010.

Gail has worked for more than 30 years in customer service and has exceptional customer service skills.

GB Bike Leathers was formed out of a necessity due to the fact we could not find any leather motorcycle clothing to fit Gail. Gail is 4' 11" tall.

For many years Gail has had to taylor and make most of her own clothing due to non availability of off the shelf garments to suit her size.

When I met Gail 5 years ago, she wanted to go on the back of my Hayabusa but did not have any protective clothing. We trauled all the local shops but could not find any suitable clothing.

GB Bike Leathers was born!

Gail stated "get me an industrial sewing machine and some leather and i will make my own." Well fellow bikers you can imagine my thoughts? I took Gail to the challenge!

After a period of time researching motorcycle leathers we designed and manufactured a pair of leather motorcycle pants for Gail.

Unintensional marketing.....

Gail and I returned to several of the biker shops that we had called on during our search for clothing to source a pair of gloves.  The assistants remembered us and asked where we eventually found Gail's clothing - you should have been a fly on the wall to see the looks of surprise on the assistance face when i explained!

Gail was asked by a couple of the shops if we could supply them with clothing to cater for short and tall people. At the time Gail was still working part time from 9am to 2pm getting home at 3pm so this did not leave any realistic time to go into production so we declined. We were then asked if we could take on repairs and alterations, after accepting the invitation Gail and I went away to enjoy days out on my bike.

Not for long! The telephone started to ring with repairs and alterations enquiries!

Gail found herself very quickly working from 4pm till 11pm and sometimes into the early hours of the morning. This took over Gail's life and did not leave us any quality time and no time to get out on the bike. It was decision time for Gail to give up her part time job.  I was already self employed and had been for the last 25 years so I knew the 'ropes' and set up the business partnership ... GB Bike Leathers.

About Bernard Woolmer.............................

I served my time as an auto electrician and mechanical engineer qualifying with 13 City and Guilds certificates in electrics, electronics and mechanical engineering.

After 6 years of training I decided to give up my day job and go freelance offering my electrical knowledge to garages, and transport companies helping to maintain their fleets of vehicles

I did this for 25 years until I met Gail then my life changed from working with dirty greasy vehicles to working with leather! I quickly learned how to use our 7 different types of industrial sewing machines and a computerised 6 colour industrial embroidery machine.

Moving forwards.................................

I noticed one day that my Sidi boot soles were almost worn out so I looked into getting them resoled. Like every other biker I asked my local cobbler but they did not want to know. I looked on the internet only to find lots of hopeless comments on various forums regarding resoling Sidi, Alpienstars, Gearne, Fox, RST and indeed other brands as well.

GB Bike Sidi Boot resoling was launched!

After 3 months of researching attaching soles to boots and shoes, talking to adhesive manufacturers about the best adhesives to use on different material compounds and experimenting with methods of clamping the soles to the boots without crushing or deforming them... I finally discovered a very successful method!

On the internet there still is lots of feed back about this topic and I did not want to become a cobbler with customers complaining that after a short period of use the soles had come off. In deed after talking to some clothing and motorcycle shops soles coming unglued can still be a problem for some of the current boot manufactureres.

GB has now resoled over 200 pairs of boots and counting daily, extending our range as far as possible. GB has strived to offer perfection both in the clothing repairs and boot resoling business. Our reputation is exeeding all of our expectations of success surviving and expanding only on word and mouth and our web site promotion which is constructed and designed in house. GB Bike Leathers has attracted customers from all over the UK, The Isle Of Man and even one customer from Luxembourg. We do not sub contract any work out this ensures our quality of craftmenship. 

This web shop was launched in early August 2014 and is still under constrution, to enable online ordering of motorcycle boot spares, and to promote our specialist resoling service along with alterations as well as repairs to all motorcycle clothing including leather, textile and Gore Tex.