J.G. Graves

[Guest SUPRISESTORM]

This is my first time on this website ..and am looking for ..the history of Alderman Graves ...i have used the search button but with no results .Could anyone help ?

[SteveHB]

Try this ... Google Custom Search

Not an entire history, but it is a start.

[syrup]

This is my first time on this website ..and am looking for ..the history of Alderman Graves ...i have used the search button but with no results .Could anyone help ?

Welcome to the site here is a start for you..

[Edmund]

J.G. Graves had started out in business as a ‘practical watchmaker’ but had discovered by the end of the 1880s that there was more profit to be made from selling direct to the public via newspaper advertising. He later recalled: ‘All working men in those days aspired to own a good watch. English Lever for choice. We sold many thousands of these excellent timekeepers to the great satisfaction and assistance of the manufacturers who were earnestly waiting for just such a quantity market as would allow them to run their machinery to capacity.’ Graves sold his watches direct to the public on instalment terms; ten monthly payments of 5 shillings being sufficient to secure an English Lever from his most popular line. This left the firm exposed to a greater risk of non-payment than those firms operating mainly through the club system but business grew rapidly, achieving a turnover of £1 million by 1903. Graves remained heavily committed to the sale of watches but his business soon ‘extended to various commodities’.

The growing importance of specialist mail order retailers was underlined in 1901 when Graves emerged triumphant from a dispute with the Post Office over its refusal to collect registered parcels direct from his Sheffield warehouse. ‘It certainly seems absurd’, commented a  trade journal, ‘that the business of a firm of such magnitude should be inconvenienced by an organization whose sole raison d’être is the service of the public.’ As befitting a progressive retailer Graves showed a public relations awareness that the Head Postmaster at Sheffield could not match, staging a series of publicity stunts to make him think again. Graves arranged for the firm’s clerks to go to Sheffield’s main post office, in 22 horse drawn vehicles, carrying 2000 separate items for registration. Placards asking ‘Why strangle us in red tape?’ and inviting the Post Office to ‘Wake up—20th Century nearly here’, emphasized Graves’s point and helped to achieve the desired outcome. His achievement was to show that mail order retailers, now among the Post Office’s major customers, could flex their muscles to some effect.

(info from Sheffield Independent and "Mail Order Retailing in Britain" by Coopey, O'Connell and Porter)

[Ponytail]

John George Graves, Entrepreneur and Public Benefactor 

https://jggravescharitabletrust.co.uk