Allen & Harris, Glasgow
It was February 1966 when estate agent Allen & Harris opened its doors for the first time - the same year that Harold Wilson became Prime Minister, the first credit card was introduced and, of course, England won the World Cup.
The business was founded when Mike Allen went into partnership with D.R. Harris. They opened their first office in Didcot and it wasn’t long before the ambitious duo soon opened more offices in Oxfordshire. Over the next 20 years the network expanded rapidly and stretched as far south as Hampshire and Somerset.
Then in 1988 Royal Insurance, now Royal & SunAlliance, bought it. By now the Allen & Harris brand was as strong as any in the West and South West areas and synonymous with quality estate agency. Royal & SunAlliance used this strength to rebrand other offices it had bought in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland making it the only agent that could claim to have branches in all four countries of the United Kingdom.
Today, Allen & Harris has 48 offices and nowadays, its modern-looking branches are kitted out with the latest technology and are a far cry from those that operated in the 1960s.
However, the foundations the company was built on still run through the very core of Allen & Harris. Since 1966 it has always been about listening to customers, finding opportunities for them and then working extremely hard to make everything happen – a pretty simple formula really.