Sunbeam Cycles was founded by John Marston, who was born in Ludlow, Shropshire, UK in 1836 of a minor landowning family. In 1851, aged 15, he was sent to Wolverhampton to be apprenticed to Edward Perry as a japanware manufacturer. At the age of 23 he left and set up his own japanning business making any and every sort of domestic article. He did so well that when Perry died in 1871 Marston bought Perry's business and amalgamated it with his own.