Blacks Outdoor Retail Ltd. is a British retailer, headquartered in Bury, Greater Manchester the United Kingdom which owns the British outdoor retailers Blacks, Millets and Ultimate Outdoors. Blacks is the largest outdoor retailer in the UK with stores nationwide. As of June 2026 only 21 Blacks Outdoors and 29 Millets stores remain open with most having converted to Go Outdoors.

In 1931, Blacks of Greenock published the first Good Companions catalogue. In the Second World War, Blacks made tents for the Army and Navy and made fenders for boats on D-Day. During the early part of the war, the workshops in Greenock were destroyed by a parachute mine on 8 May 1941. They had a number of retail stores throughout the UK selling and renting camping equipment, climbing and mountaineering supplies. The company was run from Greenock by Robin Duthie in the 1970s.

A Canadian retail subsidiary opened in 1958. Throughout the 1960s, it bought smaller companies including Jackson Camping. Then in 1967, it bought Benjamin Edgington Ltd, a long established independent tent, flag and marquee maker, creating a new southern base with another manufacturing facility and offices from where it ran its sales and Marketing team led by John Jackson. In 1970, it engineered a reverse takeover of the public company retailer Milletts Stores (1928) Limited that had 28 stores under the management of Anthony Millett, who had taken over after his father's death. The Group then became known as Blacks Camping and Leisure. There was another reverse takeover of retailer Greenfield Leisure in October 1984, and the Group become Blacks Camping and Leisure plc. The Greenfield Leisure stores turned out to be loss making and Blacks were forced to sell 62 of the 66 Greenfield Leisure stores.

The Blacks Leisure Group formed in 1985, is now defunct as a company. In 1986, the company and its 280 employees and 44 stores almost went into receivership. A £3.3 million offer came from the Sears Group who owned Millets, but this transaction was not completed. It received a cash injection from investors to keep it afloat the following month. It bought Miss Sam Holdings, a childrenswear company, in July 1987 for £45 million. At this time, it was headed by Bernard Garbacz. In 1989 it moved its operations to Washington, Tyne & Wear. In 1994, Blacks Camping became Blacks Outdoors.

It bought the Outdoor Group, which included Millets and Free Spirit, in November 1999 for £51 million, having first offered £55 million. At the time, Blacks had 42 stores and a 40% share in the Fila UK Ltd sportswear firm; it sold this share to the parent company in July 2000 for £12 million. In May 2002 it sold its sports division, 187 First Sport outlets, to JD Sports for £53.2 million and bought 47 outlets of Famous Army Stores in February 2002. In July 2003 it bought the Just Add Water chain of 10 shops for £4.3 million. In November 2004 it bought 27 Outdoor outlets for £2.6 million from The Scout Association. Until 2006, it engaged in an expansion of its business by opening many new stores, especially on retail parks. This expansion was short-lived.

In 2008/9 it made a loss of £6.8 million, which was a pre-tax loss of £14.4 million. Freespirit and O'Neill were not selling well, but the more well known stores were better. In early 2009 it had 12 O'Neill surf shops, but later that year Blacks is thought to have entered talks with Ronald De Waal (owner of the O'Neill brand name) to try to arrange a deal with O'Neill and Logo Group International, based in the Netherlands, to offload the stores. A deal never materialised, and the stores faced closure when Sandcity, the company who held the licence to sell and distribute O'Neill in the UK, was put into administration. Sandcity had been based in Washington, Tyne and Wear, which itself closed in May 2008, moving to the Northampton headquarters. The first UK-based O'Neill store opened in December 1997 in Covent Garden. Sandcity went into administration on 23 September 2009. This had to happen when the bank (Lloyds) refused Blacks' offer to convert them into Blacks and Millets stores. The wholesale licence of O'Neill in the UK was handed back to Logo Group International, based in the Netherlands at the same time.

In October 2009, 89 stores where closed as part of a restructuring, after the company went through a CVA which was supported by a huge majority of creditors. Before the closure it had 256 Millets, 116 Blacks and 32 Freespirit. By February 2010 it had 208 Millets, 92 Blacks and 13 Freespirit. The CVA was executed and Blacks exited a number of loss-making stores, but not before a number of the stores classed as "loss making" underwent an extensive refurbishment program using around £6 million of capital. The most costly of these stores was the Air Land and Sea store at Bluewater shopping centre in Kent. After a costing an estimated £3m and branded "the first of many to open in the UK", the store was in operation for less than 12 months, and closed as part of a CVA. Of all the stores refurbished, they were originally reported to be trading ahead of the rest of the estate. Several of the newly refurbished stores remained loss-making, and were closed when a CVA was agreed. Of the refurbished stores, the newly refurbished Blacks store at the ex-Freespirit site in Northampton was also closed.

On 23 November 2009, it reached an agreement with its creditors, landlords of its stores, which needed 75% backing. This saved the company from liquidation, with a period of great uncertainty from September to November