How did B&Q become the largest home improvement chain in Britain?
Block and Quayle develop B&Q
David Quayle (1936 – 2010) was a senior manager at Marley Tiles, which operated a leading chain of town centre DIY shops. He was assigned to manage the Belgian subsidiary. Whilst in Europe he observed the home improvements section of a local hypermarket and was inspired to establish a DIY superstore in Britain.
Quayle partnered with Richard Block (1942 – 2023), his brother-in-law, who was a disillusioned market researcher for Warner Lambert. The pair opened their first home improvement store in a disused cinema in Southampton in 1969.
The store was an instant success, and a second store was opened in Portsmouth in 1970. The Block & Quayle name became shortened to “B&Q”.
B&Q thrived on a philosophy of low-cost sites such as converted garages, basic store interiors and a “pile em high, sell em cheap” concept for leading brands. Discounts were negotiated with suppliers in exchange for prompt payment. Stores had extended opening times of around twelve hours a day.
Block left the business in 1976, later reflecting, “it became less enjoyable with the pressure of growth”.
B&Q went public with a value of £11.75 million in 1979. The business began to expand into purpose-built sites.
B&Q is acquired by Woolworths
Woolworths acquired B&Q, with 33 sites and two percent of the DIY market, for £16.8 million in 1980. The combined group held nearly ten percent of the DIY market.
Woolworths provided capital to expand the number of B&Q outlets. The Dodge City chain of DIY stores was acquired for £20 million in 1981.
Quayle left B&Q in 1982. He later explained, “I left because I felt I had done all I could. We had seen it through and done what we wanted to do”.
Kingfisher becomes a streamlined home improvements retailer
Woolworths was renamed Kingfisher in 1989.
B&Q held 19 percent of the British DIY market by 1998.
NOMI, the leading chain of DIY shops in Poland, was acquired for £16 million in 1998.
55 percent of Castorama, the leading DIY group in Europe, was acquired in 1998. Kingfisher became the third largest home improvements retailer in the world, behind only Home Depot and Lowes of the United States.
Screwfix of Yeovil was acquired for £60 million in 1999.
The B&Q website, diy.com, was launched in 2000.
The Woolworths general store chain was divested in 2001 to leave Kingfisher as a focused DIY group.
The remnant of Castorama was acquired for £3.2 billion in 2002.
NOMI was sold in 2003.
Quayle died with an estate valued at £4.4 million in 2010.
Kingfisher was the third largest home improvement retailer in the world in 2013.
Why is Greene King’s 5X one of the most remarkable beers in the world?
Blending in British beer
Beer that is fermented for longer has the opportunity to develop unique and interesting flavours. Many British breweries of the Victorian era produced an aged “stock beer” that would be blended with a fresh “running beer” to produce a finished product which combined the drinkability of fresh beer with a greater depth of flavour.
A view of the Greene King brewery by Elliott Brown in 2019.
Some of the most successful beers owe a debt to the blending tradition. Newcastle Brown Ale, introduced in 1927, was originally a blend of a dark aged beer with a lighter pale ale. Guinness Foreign Extra Stout was blended with two percent aged beer from 1950 until perhaps the early 1990s.
Truman’s Brewery of London continued to produce their No 1 barley wine by blending two thirds fresh beer with one third aged beer up until the early 1970s.
The ageing and blending tradition, inspired by English brewing techniques of the 1870s, remains alive at the Rodenbach brewery in Belgium. A stock beer is aged for between eighteen months and two years and then blended with two thirds fresh beer.
5X, the great survivor
Greene King of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk is one of the largest brewers of traditional ale in Britain. By the 1990s it was the last major brewery in Britain to retain the stock beer tradition.
Greene King brew 5X to around twelve percent ABV using pale, and crystal malt. It is aged for at least a year in untreated 100-barrel English oak vats. John Bexon, a former head brewer at Greene King, explained, “the microflora in there slowly matures the flavor and it almost sours it like a Belgian Lambic”.
According to Greene King, “5X on its own can taste very tart and sour”, although it is occasionally made available at beer festivals. It has been blended into various Greene King beers over the years.
5X at a rate of between 15 and 25 percent is blended with Burton Pale Ale, a dark and sweet 5.6 percent ABV beer made with pale, crystal and chocolate malts, to produce Greene King Strong Suffolk at six percent ABV.
My tasting notes for Strong Suffolk highlight the aromas of vinous fruit and port wine, liquorice, kola nut, oak, malt vinegar, banana and toffee. The beer is full bodied with a very dry finish. Strong Suffolk was produced from at least the 1920s until 2018. It returned as a one-off brew in 2023.
Greene King introduced Morland’s Old Crafty Hen in 2008, a 6.5 percent ABV beer created by blending a stronger version of Old Speckled Hen with between ten and 15 percent 5X.
It is almost axiomatic that the larger the brewer, the more cost-conscious and risk-averse they become. The bean-counters take over and tradition falls by the wayside. Greene King has bucked that trend by continuing to produce 5X, and for this, they should be justly celebrated.
Sega World Sydney joined its sister theme park SegaWorld London as a high-profile failure. What went wrong?
Background
Sega World Sydney was a joint venture between Jacfun, a property consortium led by Kevin Bermeister (born 1960), and Sega. Kevin Bermeister was the general manager of the park.
Sega World Sydney was modelled on Sega’s Joypolis indoor theme park in Yokohama, Japan. The park was fitted out at a cost of AU$50 million. It occupied 10,000 sq metres of space. Unlike SegaWorld London, there was only one virtual reality ride. Alongside it was a rollercoaster, a ghost train and a dodgems.
A view of Sega World Sydney. Image used with permission.
Bermeister confidently announced that “Sega World will make existing theme parks look old-fashioned”. It was anticipated that the park would attract 1.2 – 1.5 million visitors in its first year.
The Sydney park was expected to function as an anchor site from which Sega could establish similar sites across Australia and South East Asia.
Opening and closure
Sega World Sydney was opened in March 1997 at Darling Harbour. In the first full month of opening the park attracted under 70,000 guests. Sue Williams of the Sydney Morning Herald reported in November 1997, “it is not the virtual reality attractions that catch your eye; it is the virtual emptiness of the place”.
Sega paid $36 million to exit the joint venture in 1999.
It was hoped that the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney would boost attendance figures, however the park recorded just 400,000 visitors for the year. The park struggled to attract guests outside of holiday periods, despite active discounting. Opening hours were shortened in an attempt to reduce costs. The park was closed in November 2000.
The Sega World Sydney assets were sold by auction in 2001.
How did London Brick become the largest brickmaker in the world?
John Cathles Hill establishes London Brick
John Cathles Hill (1857 – 1915) was born outside Dundee in Scotland. He followed his father into the wheelwright and cartwright profession.
John Cathles Hill (1857 – 1915)
Hill relocated to London in 1878 and worked as a joiner. He established his own business as J C Hill & Co with a capital of £300 and entered into the housebuilding trade from 1881.
Hill entered into brickmaking in 1889 with the acquisition of a small brickyard at Fletton, near Peterborough. The brickmaking business was incorporated as a private company called London Brick in 1900. It was probably the largest brickmaker in the world. There were factories at Fletton, Ponders End, and Great Bentley in Essex. 2.5 million bricks were produced every week. 1,500 people were employed.
Hill was declared bankrupt with liabilities of over £1.2 million in 1912. He suffered with cirrhosis of the liver for the last four years of his life and died in 1915. He was succeeded as manager of London Brick by his son, John Edgar Hill (1887 – 1937).
London Brick introduced the first fletton facing brick in 1923. It is a relatively inexpensive and versatile brick that used Lower Oxford Shale Clay. It is now readily identifiable as a standard housebuilding brick.
The Malcolm Stewart era
B J Forder & Son, controlled by Sir Halley Stewart (1838 – 1937), acquired London Brick in 1923. The merged business was known as London Brick Company & Forders. Stewart appointed his son, Malcolm Stewart (1872 – 1951), as company chairman in 1924.
Sir Malcolm Stewart (1872 – 1951) in 1932. Image used with permission from the National Portrait Gallery.
London Brick Company & Forders was the largest brickmaker in the world by 1931. Four million bricks a day were produced.
London Brick Company & Forders extended its distribution throughout England during the interwar period.
The name of the company reverted to London Brick from 1936.
John Edgar Hill died with a net personalty valued at £344,807 in 1937.
Stewart was made a baronet in 1937.
A company record was broken in March 1938 when over 167 million bricks were produced. London Brick held around 25 percent of the British brick market.
With a production of 1.75 billion bricks per annum, London Brick had by far the largest capacity in the world by 1946.
Stewart retired as chairman in 1950 and died the following year. He left a net estate valued at £522,965.
Continued growth of the business
London Brick established the largest brickmaking works in the world at Stewartby in Bedfordshire in the early 1950s. Complete with a model village for the workforce, the site could produce twelve million bricks a week.
The Scottish market was entered in the 1950s.
The Calvert Works in Buckinghamshire were extended in 1962. A new kiln was installed to increase capacity by 50 million bricks per annum. After installation, the Calvert Works was established as the second largest brickmaking site in Britain.
A new brickworks was opened at King’s Dyke, near Peterborough, in the late 1960s.
By 1974 London Brick controlled the entire British fletton brick market, and 41 percent of the total British brick market, and was the largest brickmaker in the world.
Around 7,000 people were employed in 1982.
Hanson restructures the business
London Brick was acquired by Hanson Trust for £247 million in 1984. Hanson was already one of the largest brickmakers in Britain through its Buttlerley subsidiary.
Hanson Trust typically acquired declining businesses, but Lord Hanson (1922 – 2004) asserted that London Brick was “essentially a well-run and managed company with a good market”. However upon acquiring the company he discovered that the industry was in steady decline. The kilns were inefficient and required replacement. London Brick’s British market share had fallen from 42 percent to 34 percent between 1981 and 1985.
Lord Hanson fired the managing director, James Bristow, who later criticised Hanson’s “greed and misunderstanding of the industry … he was paying far too much for the business and couldn’t hope to get a proper return”.
1,264 people, a quarter of the London Brick workforce, were made redundant due to falling demand in 1985. Lord Hanson commented, “there are ups and downs in certain markets. We did not lay off people at London Brick to make more money. This was to save the company, which has lost market share.”
Hanson doubled profits at London Brick between 1984 and 1988.
The Stewartby works were the largest brickworks in the world in 1990, producing 10.5 million bricks a week.
The Calvert brickworks were closed with the loss of 336 jobs in 1991.
London Brick employed 1,750 people in 1992.
Hanson merged London Brick and Butterley in 1995. The two companies manufactured over one billion bricks a year, and held around 30 percent of the domestic market.
The post-Hanson era
Hanson was acquired by HeidelbergCement in 2007.
The Stewartby brickworks were closed in 2008. The site would have required substantial investment to meet UK limits for sulphur dioxide emissions due to the type of clay used.
HeidelbergCement sold its United States and British building products businesses to Lone Star Funds for $1.4 billion in 2015.
The British brickmaking business was listed on the London Stock Exchange as Forterra with a valuation of £360 million in 2016. Forterra was the second largest brickmaker in Britain, with a quarter of the market.
The London or fletton brick is still produced by Forterra at the King’s Dyke Works.
Early life
Rupert Murdoch (born 1931) was the son of Keith Murdoch (1885 – 1952), one of the most powerful newspaper barons in Australia. He described himself as “Presbyterian, Calvinistic” and “a bit dull and humourless”.
Murdoch attended Oxford University where he gained a reputation as a left-winger. He received a third class degree in politics, philosophy and economics.
After university, Murdoch worked for two months as a sub-editor at the Daily Express, where he learned Beaverbrook-style journalism, characterised by a “piquant, personal, sometimes mischievous style … with an impish but finely honed sense of news”, according to Roy Reed of the New York Times. The period was formative for the young man, as he later reflected, “my outlook, energy, self-assurance and sense of social purpose were fashioned in the slightly mad meritocracy that is the newsroom”.
Rupert Murdoch in 1970 by Godfrey Argent. Image used with permission from the National Portrait Gallery.
Murdoch gained control of the Adelaide News following the death of his father in 1952.
The Sydney Daily Mirror was acquired in 1960. Murdoch was now a major force in the Australian market.
Murdoch launched The Australian, the first national newspaper in his native country, in 1964. He was the fourth largest newspaper proprietor in Australia by the end of the 1960s.
Murdoch acquires the News of the World and The Sun
Murdoch acquired control of the News of the World of London in January 1969. The newspaper had a reputation for “oleaginously written sex stories, crime and sport”, according to Anthony Lewis of the New York Times. It had the highest circulation of any newspaper in the Western world, with over six million copies sold every Sunday.
Murdoch relocated to Britain to manage the News of the World. Investigations and sports coverage were increased. Murdoch outsourced the public relations operations to cut costs, and increased the marketing spend. He vowed not to interfere with the political stance of the paper.
Following a controversial decision to serialise the Christine Keeler memoirs, Murdoch was interviewed by David Frost, and was “annihilated” according to Hugh Hebert of The Guardian. The episode convinced Murdoch that he would always remain an outsider amongst the British establishment.
His wife, Anna Murdoch, later commented:
Great Britain will accept you if you’re willing to join and play by the rules. Rupert wasn’t willing. He went to Great Britain to challenge Fleet Street, not because he loved Great Britain.
The Sun of London was acquired from International Publishing Corporation, the owner of the Daily Mirror, for £250,000 in November 1969. The loss-making broadsheet newspaper was immediately converted to tabloid format. Larry Lamb (1929 – 2000) was appointed as editor and he suggested that the paper would be left-of-centre “on general issues [and] reflect the political feelings of its readers”. Murdoch described the newspaper’s politics as “uncommitted”.
The Sun was based on a “formula of sex, sport and sensation”, according to The Times. Lamb doubled the circulation figures of the newspaper within one year, and introduced Page 3, a regular topless girl feature, from November 1970.
The Murdoch newspapers “regularly espoused his anti-Labour Party philosophy” by the mid-1970s, according to Judy Klemesrud of the New York Times. Murdoch’s philosophy, as far as there was one, was that he was an agent of change. He said:
I’m not the Roy Thomson type of newspaper proprietor, just making money out of newspapers. I get a lot of kicks out of the political side of it.
Murdoch expands into the United States
Flush with the success of his British venture, Murdoch determined to conquer the media market in the United States. He relocated to New York City from 1973. He acquired a Texas newspaper, the San Antonio Express.
Murdoch believed that most American newspapers were aimed at “the rich and the intellectual” and characterised by “worthy and lazy” journalism. He believed that he could exploit this underserved market.
Murdoch acquired the New York Post for $31 million in 1976. New York magazine was acquired for around $8 million in 1977.
Murdoch builds his British publishing empire The Sun overtook archi-rival the Daily Mirror in circulation figures from 1978.
Murdoch acquired the loss-making The Times and the Sunday Times for £12 million in 1981. For biographer Michael Wolff it was the “most substantial and complicated takeover of [Murdoch’s] career”. For Dan van der Vat of The Times, the acquisition transformed Murdoch into “the most powerful figure in Fleet Street”.
Harold Evans (1928 – 2020), who served as editor of The Times under Murdoch, argued:
the wellsprings [of Murdoch’s conservatism] are the retention of power and money, its methods are manipulation and the adroit manufacture of alliances … it can be jettisoned at any moment for advantage. Politicians are endorsed when the calculation is that they will win power and patronage.
Murdoch expands his media interests
Murdoch used the cash generated by The Sun and the News of the World to borrow money in order to build a media empire in the 1980s.
50 percent of 20th Century Fox was acquired for $250 million in 1982. The remainder was acquired for $325 million in 1984.
A 65 percent stake in Satellite Television of Britain was acquired for £5 million in 1983, and Murdoch renamed the business Sky.
Murdoch relocated his British printworks to a new site at Wapping in London’s Docklands in 1986.
Metromedia was acquired for £1.5 billion ($2 billion) in 1986, and Fox was launched as the fourth national television channel in the United States.
The Herald & Weekly Times group of Australia was acquired for £1.48 billion in 1987 to give Murdoch control of around 60 percent of Australian newspaper circulation.
Harper & Row, a United States publishing house, was acquired for around $300 million in 1987.
Forbes assessed Murdoch as the eighth richest man in the United States in 1987.
Triangle Publishing, a magazine publisher best known for TV Guide, was acquired for $3 billion in 1988.
Murdoch controlled around one third of British newspaper circulation by 1988.
Williams Collins, one of the largest publishers in Britain, was acquired for £403 million in 1989. Collins was merged with Harper & Row to form HarperCollins.
Murdoch struggled to make Sky profitable, and merged the business with British Satellite Broadcasting to form BSkyB in 1990.
News Corp was the second largest media company in the world by 1992.
BSkyB won the five-year rights to broadcast all live Premier League football games for £304 million in 1992.
Murdoch acquired almost two thirds of Star TV, an Asian satellite broadcaster, for $525 million in 1993.
Fox News began to broadcast in the United States in 1996. Murdoch had identified an underserved market for television news with a right-of-centre view.
Recent changes
News Corp formally changed its headquarters from Australia to the United States in 2004.
Murdoch acquired Dow Jones, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, for $5 billion in 2007. The Wall Street Journal had the second-highest circulation of any newspaper in the United States. Murdoch promised to increase investment in journalism.
News Corp changed its name to 21st Century Fox in 2013. The publishing assets were spun-off as News Corp.
21st Century Fox sold its 39 percent stake in Sky to Comcast for £11.6 billion in 2018.
21st Century Fox was sold to Disney for $71.3 billion in 2019.
Robert Spear Hudson introduced the first commercial soap powder in the world in 1837. The business he established later introduced the Omo and Rinso detergent products.
Establishment
Robert Spear Hudson (1812 – 1884) was born in West Bromwich in the West Midlands of England. His father was the pastor of the local Congregationalist church.
Robert Spear Hudson (1812 – 1884)
Hudson was apprenticed to an apothecary, and opened a chemist’s shop on West Bromwich High Street from around 1830.
Hudson was possessed by a restless energy, and had a firm commitment to hard work. Through trial and experimentation he introduced Hudson’s Dry Soap, the first commercial soap powder, from 1837. The basic formula for the product is believed to have consisted of dried soap mixed with sodium carbonate.
Hudson also invented a new baking powder, the formula for which he gifted to George Borwick (1807 – 1889), his brother in law.
Borwick acted as the London agent for Hudson’s Dry Soap from 1844, and from that year the product was used by the Royal Household of Queen Victoria.
Hudson employed a staff of ten girls in 1854. This had increased to two men, four boys and 19 girls by 1861.
Demand became such that Hudson had to subcontract soap production to William Hunt of Wednesbury from 1864.
R S Hudson enters into mass production
Hudson’s Dry Soap entered into mass production from 1870. From this time the supply of stock soap was contracted to William Gossage & Sons of Merseyside.
Hudson succeeded due to his thorough nature, and his ready appreciation of the importance of advertising.
A much larger second factory was established at Bank Hall, Liverpool, in 1875. The head office was transferred to Bank Hall. The site was convenient for the imported raw material of vegetable oil, and also had excellent railway, canal and dock links.
Robert Spear Hudson died in 1884. His personal estate was valued at over £295,000. He had been a generous benefactor and a keen Congregationalist throughout his life. He was succeeded as head of the business by his son, Robert William Hudson (1856 – 1938).
120 million half-pound packets of soap powder were sold every year by 1888. The business spent £20,000 a year on advertising.
1,000 people were employed by 1908.
Acquisition by Lever Brothers
Lever Brothers, a large soap manufacturer, acquired R S Hudson in 1908. The price paid was undisclosed, but The Times described the figure as “a staggering amount”. R S Hudson was converted into a limited liability company with a capital of £500,000.
R S Hudson was continued with the same management. However new product lines were introduced; Omo for bleaching clothes in 1908, and Rinso washing detergent in 1910.
Supply of stock soap for the dry powder was immediately switched from William Gossage & Sons to Lever Brothers, in a major blow for the rival business.
The two Hudson factories were modernised in 1927. Electricity replaced steam power, and automated product-packing was introduced.
Lever Brothers gradually transferred production to their large factory at Port Sunlight. The R S Hudson factories in Liverpool and West Bromwich were closed in 1935.
Robert William Hudson died in 1938 with a personal estate in England valued at £234,146.
R S Hudson was merged with John Knight, another soap manufacturer controlled by Lever Brothers, to form Hudson & Knight in 1945.
Hudson & Knight was integrated into Unilever, the successor to Lever Brothers, in 1964.
How did F Perkins become the largest manufacturer of diesel engines in the world?
Establishment of F Perkins
Francis “Frank” Arthur Perkins (1889 – 1967) and Charles Wallace Chapman (1897 – 1979) decided to develop a lightweight diesel engine for use in trucks and lorries. They were convinced that a diesel engine could be made more reliable and efficient than their petrol equivalents.
Frank Perkins (1889 – 1967)
F Perkins was established at Queen Street, Peterborough in 1932. The company had a capital of £10,000, four directors and three employees. One engine a week was produced in the first year.
Frank Perkins broke the high speed world record for a diesel engine with a 100mph run in 1935.
Over 600 engines a year were produced by 1938.
F Perkins built marine engines for the Royal Navy during the Second World War.
Post-war expansion
F Perkins anticipated an increased demand for diesel engines in the post-war period, and built a new factory at Eastfield, Peterborough. The business operated 75 acres of factories by 1950.
F Perkins was converted into a public company in 1951.
F Perkins was the largest manufacturer of diesel engines in the world by 1953, with an annual production of 60,000. Almost 9,000 people were employed.
A diesel engine designed for motor cars was introduced from 1958.
Subsequent ownership
F Perkins began to appear vulnerable as the large vehicle manufacturers began to produce their own diesel engines. The business was acquired by Massey-Ferguson, the largest manufacturer of farm tractors in the world, for £4.5 million in 1959. Perkins was contracted to supply Massey-Ferguson with all of their engine requirements.
F Perkins employed 10,000 people by 1967, including 7,000 in Peterborough. 1,500 diesel engines could be produced every day.
Massey-Ferguson was renamed Varity Corporation from 1982.
Around 400,000 engines a year were built across 15 different countries by 1992.
4,000 people were employed in Peterborough in 1997.
LucasVarity sold Perkins to Caterpillar, the largest manufacturer of construction equipment in the world, for £803 million in 1998.
Perkins remains one of the largest diesel engine manufacturers in the world.
James Buchanan helped to establish sales of Scotch whisky in England, and died as one of the richest men in Britain. Buchanan’s remains the third highest-selling Scotch whisky brand in the world.
James Buchanan helps to establish Scotch whisky sales in London
James Buchanan (1849 – 1935) was born to Scottish parents in Ontario, Canada.
James Buchanan in 1923
Buchanan relocated to London, England from 1879 where he worked as a salesman for Charles Mackinlay & Co, a well-known Scotch whisky distributor.
Buchanan struggled to earn sufficient money, and lived in a bedsit and worked 16 hour days. His grit and perseverance ultimately paid off when a friend loaned him the capital to form his own whisky wholesale operation in 1884. He established an office at Bucklersbury in the City of London.
Most whisky sold in London at the time was Irish, but Buchanan created a Scotch blend that could be relied on for its consistency and quality. “The Buchanan blend” was the first Scotch whisky to really appeal to the English palate. W P Lowrie & Co of Glasgow was contracted to produce the product.
Buchanan succeeded due to his efficiency and hard work. He also had the gift of the gab; he was a quick thinker and a great talker. Buchanan was the first person to offer free whisky samples to publicans. He charmed landlords, who he convinced that his whisky offered health benefits.
Buchanan established his reputation when he was awarded a contract to supply the House of Commons with Scotch whisky from 1885. Buchanan was soon marketing the “House of Commons blend” to the general public.
Buchanan won the gold medal for Scotch whisky at the International Exhibition in Paris in 1889.
Parliament took umbrage at Buchanan’s use of its brand in order to sell whisky, and as a result, the Buchanan contract was ended in 1893.
Buchanan acquired the freehold of the Black Swan distillery at Holborn from Sir Alan Young for £90,000 in 1897. The premises became his head office and storage and bottling warehouse.
Buchanan entered into whisky production for himself with the acquisition of the Glentauchers distillery in Glenlivet in 1898.
James Buchanan & Co received Royal Warrants to supply Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales in 1898.
Buchanan had won back the contract to supply Parliament by 1901.
James Buchanan & Co was registered as a limited company in 1903.
Buchanan’s blend was packaged in a black bottle with a white label. Customers referred to it as the “black and white whisky”, and the product was rebranded as Black & White from 1904.
James Buchanan & Co acquired majority control of W P Lowrie & Co in 1906. The purchase included the Convalmore distillery on Speyside.
Buchanan opened the largest bonded warehouse in Britain in Glasgow in 1907.
James Buchanan & Co had acquired the Bankier distillery at Kilsyth by 1908.
James Buchanan & Co held the largest reserves of Scotch whisky in the world by 1913.
All reference to the House of Commons was removed from Buchanan’s branding from 1915.
Merger with John Dewar & Sons; acquisition by Distillers
James Buchanan & Co merged with John Dewar & Sons, a rival Scotch whisky manufacturer, to form Buchanan-Dewar in 1915. The move was a defensive one against rising spirits taxation and increasing raw materials costs. The merged business held the largest reserve of whisky stocks in Scotland, and had a combined capital of £5 million.
Black & White was the second highest-selling Scotch whisky in Britain in the 1920s.
James Buchanan was raised to the Peerage as Baron Woolavington from 1922.
Mackie & Co of Glasgow, best known for the White Horse brand, was acquired in 1923.
Domestic sales of Scotch had entered into sharp decline following the First World War following a rise in spirit duties. Buchanan-Dewar was acquired by Distillers Co in 1925.
The Inland Revenue estimated that Buchanan’s annual income amounted to £485,000 a year by 1929, making him the third richest man in Britain.
James Buchanan & Co held over 18 million imperial gallons of aged whiskies in 1931, the largest stock in the world. Black & White was made with a blend of whiskies that had all been aged at least eight years.
Buchanan died in 1935. His gross estate was valued at £7,150,000 and was largely dedicated to finding a cure for cancer.
High demand for Black & White
Black & White had received a Royal Warrant to supply Queen Elizabeth II by 1955.
Black & White was the second highest-selling Scotch whisky in the United States by 1961. It also held a strong position in the German market.
British sales of Black & White amounted to 500,000 cases a year by 1967.
James Buchanan & Co was awarded the Queens Award To Industry for export achievement in 1966 and 1967. Its products were sold in 168 countries.
Demand for Black & White outstripped capacity, and a new blending and bottling plant was opened at Stepps, Lanarkshire, outside Glasgow, in 1969.
The Glentauchers distillery was closed in 1985.
Acquisition by Guinness
Distillers was acquired by Guinness to form the third largest drinks business in the world in 1986. The bottling plant at Stepps was closed with the loss of 340 jobs in 1987. The James Buchanan & Co head office at St James’s Square in London was also closed, and administrative operations were centralised at Hammersmith.
South America accounted for nearly one third of Black & White sales by 1996.
Guinness merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo.
Buchanan’s is the third highest-selling premium Scotch whisky in the world. Its key markets include the United States, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil.
Black & White was the sixth highest-selling Scotch whisky in the world in 2021.
This post looks to explore why some well-established brands fail.
Introduction: give me some sugar
Henry Tate (1819 – 1899), the proprietor of Tate & Lyle sugar, once described the nature of his highly lucrative business: “[I] pull on a string and gold sovereigns come tumbling down”. Tate & Lyle sugar is still a highly valuable brand today, and it remains a truism that great fortunes remain to be gleaned in the consumer goods sector.
Once a brand is well-established it seems relatively straightforward, as Mr Tate implied, to sit back and watch the money amass. But that negates to reflect the intrinsic difficulties of brand management. What I find to be more inherently illustrative is when a well-established brand declines and ultimately fails. What causes the brand to fail, and what lessons can it demonstrate?
Family troubles
Quarrelling families are a subject as old as time. However they can cause havoc for a family-run enterprise. Nathan Baraf Walters (1867 – 1957) developed Palm Toffee and became one of the largest toffee manufacturers in Britain. However he refused to pass on the business to his four sons. The sons contested their father’s will in the Probate Court, and the QC reflected, “unhappily this family was riven with difficulties and troubles for years. I dare say the deceased bore his share of responsibility for them”. The business was subsequently subjected to a takeover by Holland’s toffee, a larger rival. The Walters factory was immediately closed, and the Palm Toffee brand disappeared.
Gin fails to blossom
The Distillers Co acquired much of the English gin industry in the early twentieth century. Marketing strength was consolidated behind Gordon’s, their leading brand, and long-established brands such as Booth’s (est.1770s), Boord’s (1774) and Vickers (1820) withered from neglect.
Fading sparkle
Showerings was a small brewery business in rural Somerset. They introduced Babycham sparkling perry in post-war Britain to immediate success. Showerings operated the largest bottling plant in the world by the late 1950s. At its height, 90 percent of licensed premises stocked Babycham. But annual sales plummeted precariously from 144 million bottles in 1977 to just one million in 1993. The conventional explanation suggests that Babycham ceased to be fashionable. Was this a failure of marketing or was a decline in the public perception of the brand intrinsically inevitable?
You butter believe it James Epps introduced instant cocoa to the mass market. At its peak Epps & Co processed half of all cocoa imports into Britain. But the business failed to respond to rivals such as Cadbury and Rowntree, who introduced the Van Houten press to remove some of the unpalatable cocoa butter from the product. The business declined over time, and was eventually acquired by Rowntree, and the Epps brand disappeared.
Conclusion
Whilst far from exhaustive, this post sketches some reasons why brands can fail: management and family disputes, consolidation, poor marketing and a failure to respond to consumer demand.
William Gossage & Sons was the largest soap manufacturer in the United Kingdom, and possibly the world, by 1877.
Early life and Stoke Prior
William Gossage (1799 – 1877) was born in Lincolnshire. After serving an apprenticeship to his uncle in Chesterfield, Gossage commenced trade as a chemist and druggist at Leamington Spa in Warwickshire.
William Gossage (1799-1877)
Gossage was appointed chemist to the Stoke Prior Salt and Alkaki Works in Worcestershire from 1830. Gossage sank a shaft that was to prove highly successful in pumping brine. He was eventually appointed a director and managing partner of the business.
Gossage commences the manufacture of soap in Widnes
Gossage established a soda-making plant at Widnes, Merseyside, from 1850. He also produced alkali from crushed limestone. He soon gave up soda-making, and commenced the smelting of copper, which was to prove successful.
Soap prices increased during the Crimean War (1853 – 56) due to inflated tallow prices. Gossage began to manufacture a low-cost alternative soap of similar quality using sodium silicate and palm oil from 1855.
Gossage introduced blue mottled soap from 1857. Mottled soap served no superior utilitarian function, but gave the soap the pleasant aesthetic appearance of marble.
William Gossage was considered a model employer, and was highly popular with his workforce. He employed 80 men by 1861.
The two sons and T S Timmis enter the business
Alfred Howard Gossage (1831 – 1904) and Frederick Herbert Gossage (1832 – 1907), sons of William Gossage, had entered the business as partners by 1861.
Thomas Sutton Timmis (1830 – 1910) joined the business from 1865, and became a partner.
Thomas Sutton Timmis (1830 – 1910) c.1892
A H Gossage retired in 1866.
William Gossage & Sons held a contract to produce dry soap for R S Hudson from 1869.
William Gossage & Sons was the second largest soap manufacturer in Britain by 1870.
William Gossage retired from business due to ill health from 1874.
Frederick Gossage and Thomas Timmis were to drive the business forward. Gossage had the technical expertise, and Timmis possessed a keen aptitude for finance.
William Gossage & Sons was the largest soap manufacturer in the United Kingdom, and possibly the world by 1877, with an output of no less than 500 tons a week.
William Gossage & Sons employed 500 men and 40 boys by 1881.
Over 200,000 tons of mottled soap were produced between 1862 and 1887.
William Gossage & Sons held a contract to produce Sunlight soap during the early days of Lever Brothers. Frederick Gossage was said to have taught William Lever how to make soap.
Gossage and Timmis converted the business into a private limited company, William Gossage & Sons, from 1894.
William Gossage & Sons produced 1,400 tons of soap a week by 1897, and was probably the second largest soap manufacturer in the world after Lever Brothers. The business focused on the overseas trade, and had a large market in China.
Frederick Gossage died with a net personalty of £709,396 in 1907.
Thomas Timmis died in 1910 with a net personalty valued at £643,247.
Thousands of tons of blue mottled soap were produced annually by 1911. William Gossage & Sons accounted for 57 percent of all soap exported from the United Kingdom, and held 33 percent of the foreign soap trade worldwide.
Acquisition by Brunner Mond
Brunner Mond, the largest chemical manufacturer in the world, acquired William Gossage & Sons and Joseph Crosfield & Sons of Warrington, a rival soap manufacturer, in 1911. Brunner Mond was a major supplier of raw material for the soap industry, and the merger was motivated by an intent to create a strong competitor against the increasingly dominant Lever Brothers.
The Widnes site covered about fourteen acres by 1914. About 1,500 people were employed. Exports were strong throughout the British Empire, and in the Far East.
Sale to Lever Brothers
Lever Brothers acquired William Gossage & Sons and Joseph Crosfield & Sons in 1919.
William Gossage & Sons employed around 1,300 people in 1928.
The Widnes site was closed in 1932, and production was transferred to Lever Brothers-controlled plants in Bromborough and Warrington.
William Gossage & Sons was merged with Joseph Watson & Sons, a Leeds soap manufacturer that was also controlled by Lever Brothers, to form Watson & Gossage from 1937.
