The business of C. E. Wise was started in 1925 by Charles Eric (Jim) Wise and Hilda Josephine Wise at the back of their house at 67 Penders Street, Thornbury, Victoria. 
Hilda had started work at 14 in a clothing manufacturing business in Flinders Lane, Melbourne, and showed the industry and drive that always destined her to start her own manufacturing business. With hard work and dedication she and her husband Charles Eric Wise built a business initially producing girls' school blazers and put together an impressive list of early retail customers: Ball & Welsh, Mutual Store, Leviathan, Buckley & Nunn, Foy & Gibson, Mantons, Myer. By the end of the 1940s they had established a name in the school wear sector in Melbourne. In 1947 they built a dedicated factory at 780 High Street, Thornbury.
By the 1950s Jim and Hilda Wise had an expanding, successful business. Two of their three children - Graham Wise and Valma Wise joined the business, while Phil Wise took his notable graphic and design skills into the automotive industry designing and modelling cars at both Ford and Holden. 
By the late 1950s Graham Wise had taken a management role at C. E. Wise while Val attended to book-keeping and shared production management with Hilda. Graham Wise simultaneously developed the business and dedicated himself to his exceptional talents as a middle distance runner (reaching the final of the Victorian mile each year for more than a decade during the golden period of Australian middle-distance running and displaying the longevity of form that eventually saw him run a world record for veterans in the 800m as a 40 year old).
The business continued to prosper in the 1960s while Valma left Australia's shores to spend 7 years in the UK. She returned in 1966 as Val Barrington with a young family of her own and rejoined the business. 
Charles Eric Wise had fully handed over the leadership of the business to Graham Wise in the 1960s. In 1970, sadly, the man who gave his name to the business died.
C. E. Wise Pty Ltd expanded through the 1970s to be a manufacturer of school wear to other eastern Australian states and by the end of the 1970s employed more than 30 people making over 14,000 blazers alone each year. Graham Wise concentrated on building enduring business relationships based on his own quiet and honest style, winning respect from the industry. Val Barrington displayed the diligence and personnel management skills to successfully oversee an efficient production process.
The hard economic times of the 1980s were weathered in large part by the strength and sheer hard work that Hilda still managed to instil in all. In 1990 Hilda Josephine Wise - an inspiring and galvanising force in the manufacturing sector of the rag trade - sadly also passed away.
Graham Wise still had the drive and industry standing through the 1990s to see the business expand in markets and products to reach all eastern Australian states, the Northern Territory and the first customer in New Zealand. 
Graham Wise continued his management of the business into the early years of the new millennium.
In 2006, the Wise family saw the passing of the baton to a third generation of leadership of the business with an equity stake being taken in C. E. Wise Pty Ltd by Valma's son, Dr. Graham Barrington, who, with an eye to family history and having himself started in the family business in 1972, supplements his clinical role in paediatrics at the Royal Children's hospital and brings his MBA from the Melbourne Business School, his health sector management expertise, and board experience to the Director's role at C. E. Wise Pty Ltd, further shaping the business - now a substantial specialist manufacturer and retailer of school wear in Australia and New Zealand - to take its rightful place as an historical icon of Australasia's school wear industry.