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Adversity & Resilience: Business & Retail
Shopping methods begin to change
Early shops were strongly service-oriented and labour-intensive. At grocers, customers waited while shop assistants took items down from shelves and even weighed some foods out into small packets from bulk supplies. In Cribb and Foote, shop walkers made sure service was up to standard and customers were offered chairs to sit on while they looked at goods brought out from drawers. The items purchased were often put on accounts which were paid monthly. Larger parcels were usually carefully wrapped and delivered to the customer’s home.
During the interwar period, this began to change. “Cash and Carry” grocers made the first inroads into traditional shop-keeping, stressing price rather than service. When the ACB store extended its premises in 1926, it advertised its grocery section as “Our famous cash and carry prices. From today, we will give Mr Big Profit a very uncomfortable time”.
The first Australian Woolworths had opened in Sydney in 1924. The first Queensland stores were in Brisbane and the next was in Ipswich in 1929, where a building opposite the Town Hall was extended and extensively renovated. Although bargains were to be the main incentive for shopping there, the premises were slick and stylish for their time. The exterior had display windows of curved glass with Queensland maple frames above black tiles, with the firm’s emblem in gold. The 30 staff wore red uniforms with starched white collars and the shop introduced one of the curses of modern retailing: “Business is to be done with music, for which a phonograph with an electric amplifier has been installed.” The interior was arranged with long maple counters where goods could be displayed. The store’s slogan was “Walk through our store every day – you will not be asked to buy” and although there were plenty of staff to help, it was a step towards the modern concept of customers making their own selection.
A rival store Penneys (which later evolved into Coles) opened in 1938 in Nicholas Street.
Two new local retailers in this period are still successful Ipswich businesses - R.T. Edwards, founded by Roy Edwards and Big Whites, founded by John White. A third local enterprise Mathers has grown into a huge chain of shoe stores. As a boy, William Mather started work in a Brisbane shoe shop, attracted by a cowboy advertising poster in the window. After serving in World War I, he studied at business college then worked in several places before taking a job at Beirnes in Ipswich. In the 1920s, he borrowed money and opened his own shoe shop in Nicholas Street. When he later found himself overstocked due to slow sales, he reacted in a positive way and opened a second store in Brisbane. This was the start of the Mathers chain which, by the time of its diamond anniversary, had 133 stores. [1]
