(also known as Littlewoods Shop Direct
Group or LSDG) is a United Kingdom retail Limited company, based in Liverpool,
Merseyside, England.
Formed from the merger of the Littlewoods and Shop Direct
groups around 2004, LSDG has its roots in the pools and retail business founded
by John and Cecil Moores, and the home shopping business of "Great Universal
Stores" (now called
GUS plc), respectively.
Founded
by John Moores and his brother Cecil in 1923, Littlewoods was initially a
football pools company, which used its network of pools agents and printing
company (founded in 1928) to establish itself as a
catalogue retailer from 1932 onwards.The success of the catalogue shopping business led to the opening of a
Littlewoods high street department store in Blackpool in 1937.In October
2001, Littlewoods became the owner of the Swan brand for electrical goods
and kitchen equipment.In November 2002 the Moores
family sold the Littlewoods Group to the Barclay brothers for £750
million.Littlewoods also owned the
Index chain of stores.
GUS/Shop Direct
The home shopping/catalogues business of
Argos and Homebase owner, GUS plc, ARG Equation (including Great Universal, Kays,
Choice and Marshall Ward) was de-merged and bought by the Barclay brothers in
2003, where it became Shop Direct. Following clearance from the Monopolies and
Mergers Commission, the two businesses formally merged in October 2005.
Formation of Littlewoods Shop Direct Group
In March 2005, following a twenty year
history in which it had never made a profit, it was announced that part of the
Index chain of catalogue shops was to be sold to
Argos, and the remainder was to be closed
In July 2005 Associated British Foods
purchased the 120 branch Littlewoods retail chain on behalf of its retail
subsidiary
Primark for £409 million. Some of the stores are being converted into
branches of Primark, and the remainder are being sold on to other retailers. The
Littlewoods name disappeared from the British high street in March 2006.
Following these disposals, the Littlewoods
home shopping business was formally merged with that of Shop Direct (the GUS plc
home shopping business), to form the United Kingdom's largest home shopping
business. The merger was in reality effected in early 2004 when work started on
a business optimisation programme involving creating merged business fucntion
units and in moving the whole home shopping business onto a single set of
computer systems.
Littlewoods Brands
LSDG
currently operates a variety of home shopping brands, consisting of the former
Littlewoods brands, Littlewoods and
LX Direct, and the former Shop Direct
brands, Additions Direct, Abound,
Great Universal, Marshall Ward, Choice, and Kays. A sports website, called sport-e.com was also opened by the group in 2003.
abound
offers great shopping ideas for the fashion-conscious woman and her
family. There's an emphasis on fashion and style as the latest
catwalk looks meet cool home interiors - your edited contemporary
lifestyle is finally here. High Street brands such as Morgan, Oasis,
Miss Sixty and Diesel are mixed with in-house styles that are ideal
for must-have fashion lovers.
The editorial style gives an
informative magazine feel to the brand, with both lifestyle and
still life images mixing with the fashion pages.
Visit our transactional website at
abound.co.uk, to browse and
purchase items 24/7, or order over the phone by calling
0845-300-5050. It's easy and convenient - like a high street but in
the comfort of your home.
Additions
Direct offers 24-hour retail therapy with the latest high fashion,
home furnishings and top brand electrical products.
The Additions Direct Plus Account
allows account holders to try before they buy. For Additions Direct
top shoppers we offer a VIP club, which provides a dedicated order /
enquiry line, exclusive online previews, offer rewind facilities and
an exclusive VIP area on the website.
Great
Universal offers a department store in the convenience
of your own home with an attractive book and a
user-friendly website.
The book stocks a huge
range of fashion and homewares from kitchens and
conservatories to jewellery, gifts and collectables.
www.Great Universal.co.uk offers extended ranges
online; including high fashion - 'Just in!' - and
extended homewares - 'Web Extras'.
The exclusive 'Web
Extras' range includes the latest fashion, wedding
outfits and fantastic deals on electrical items.
Seven great reasons to
shop with Great Universal
All the choice of
the high street, plus great value and convenience
Top high street
brands - including Miss Sixty, Ted Baker, Diesel,
Ralph Lauren, Bench, Playboy, Hooch and many more
Free ordering via
our website or freephone order line - both available
24/7
Free delivery
Free returns
Commission
Marshall
Ward
Marshall
Ward offers a great range of stylish
clothes and products for the home. Shop
from the latest book or online where you
will find the recently relaunched
Berkertex range, an exclusive range of
clothes modeled by Twiggy and the latest
products to re-style your home.
Marshall
Ward carries a choice of clothes to suit
both your way of life and your mood;
you'll find elegant dressing with a
modern twist (Fashion Debut) as well as
subtle reflections of those 'must-have'
trends (Latest Looks). Each look is
complimented by a beautiful range of
accessories so you can personalise your
outfit by adding that finishing piece;
if you're not quite sure you can always
use the exclusive "Ask Gill" feature and
get tips from a regular fashion expert.
Relax and
take time out to browse through the
'Home and Leisure' section, whether you
are planning a total overhaul or simply
a room update "Ask Jane", the resident
Style director, can point you in the
right direction.
Littlewoods
Direct
Designed
with time-conscious customers in mind, the
new season book and website (www.littlewoodsdirect.com)
make it even easier to find all the
definitive looks from the catwalk and high
street.As well as the best choice of women's
fashions, the range also offers kidswear,
menswear, homewares, electronics, toys and
jewellery.
All the
choice of the high street in the
convenience of your own home
Exclusive designer clothes - including
Amanda Wakeley and Nicholas Millington
High
street brands - including Miss Sixty,
Ted Baker, Diesel and Morgan
Next day
delivery available on most items with
the reassurance that orders are tracked
every step of the way by our own
delivery tracking system. This means you
can choose when you want the order to be
delivered
Free
returns
Price
Check - we're constantly checking our
prices against the high street to bring
you the best possible value
Contemporary homewares and all the
latest technology
More
styles for less
Littlewoods Clearance
Littlewoods Clearance has 28
retail outlets across the UK, with a central office located in Manchester.
Following the creation of Littlewoods Shop Direct Group, Littlewoods Clearance,
formerly Bargain Crazy, is the prime selling route for surplus stock within the
group.
is part of the Littlewoods Home Shopping Group and is one of the
UK's leading online sports retailers. With ranges such as the latest trainers,
football gear, leisurewear and ladies gymwear - there is a wealth of choice
available for your visitors. Sport-e.com is an authorised retailer for top
brands such as Nike, Adidas, Puma and Reebok. We also offer one of the best
commission rates around for this sector! Unfortunately Sport-e only deliver to
the UK currently.
Our
Business
Littlewoods Shop Direct Home
Shopping Limited
Our Vision:
Inspire every
household to shop with us for
life.
Littlewoods Shop Direct Home
Shopping Limited is the UK’s
leading online and home shopping
retailer, with annual sales of
around £2 billion and five
million customers. We sell all
of the major brands, including
Sony, Nike, Levi’s, Adidas,
Phillips, Kodak, Dyson, Bosch,
Amanda Wakeley, Morgan and Miss
Sixty.
We are one of the largest online
retailers in the UK and plan to
double our online sales to £750
million in the next three years.
To support the expected growth
of online retailing, Littlewoods
Shop Direct Group has a highly
valuable and efficient
infrastructure that no other UK
retailers can rival – sourcing,
warehousing, single pick and
pack distribution, home delivery
to customers.
A 21st century
business
Over the past four years, we
have transformed and modernised
the entire business. We have
sold our stores and merged the
home shopping businesses to
create the UK's leading online
and home shopping retailer.
We have strengthened our
management team - five board
directors, each of whom are
experienced specialists in their
fields. We have worked hard to
build a strong platform on which
to now move the business
forward.
In January 2006, we moved in to
our new £31m state-of-the-art
head office in
Speke, South Liverpool. A
breathtaking grade II listed
former aircraft hanger, Skyways
House provides employees with an
open and exciting working
environment, with all the high
quality facilities a modern head
office should offer.
Examples of merchandise
1 years interest free
credit and £15 off your first order
Littlewoods are
dedicated to improving every aspect of the shopping
experience
Littlewoods
launched in 2005, Putting the customer 1st
represents our long-term commitment to creating a
customer-focussed culture which is at the very heart
of our thinking.
Littlewoods
are dedicated to improving every aspect of the
shopping experience, Littlewoods aim to make life easy for
our customers, giving them great ideas, making
purchase, delivery and payment fast and simple.
Based around well-proven
quality principles, Littlewoodsthe are training our staff in a
range of improvement techniques designed to tackle
every aspect of our business, as viewed from a
customer perspective.
Lead and sponsored from the
top, over 150 separate live projects are already
underway to transform the overall customer
experience and improve the effectiveness of
Littlewoods
organisation.
Already, Littlewood are seeing
fundamental changes as our staff embrace the
concepts and techniques, and we expect this to grow
as we make putting the customer first part of our
organisational DNA.
The Littlewoods Community
Littlewoods are committed to long-term
partnerships
Littlewoods are committed to supporting our local
environment and are an active participant within the community.
Littlewoods sees the value in investing in
charitable organisations, to ensure that they receive the full
support and benefits that come from working in partnership with a
commercial enterprise.
As part of Littlewoods ongoing
charitable and community support, we actively encourage all
employees to join us in helping to make a difference to the
charities we have committed to long-term partnerships with.
Our two charities of choice are Alder Hey
Children's Hospital and its Imagine Appeal, and Weston
Spirit,
a charity working with disadvantaged teenagers.
To
find out more information, click on one of the charities shown
Littlewoods Delivery Network
Home Delivery Network Limited
Home Delivery Network Limited is
the UK’s largest home delivery company, delivering to
every postcode… every working day.
Formed on 1 May 2005 when we
integrated two of the UK’s largest in-house parcel
delivery companies, Business Express and Reality Group,
Home Delivery Network has a combined experience of over
90 years of delivering parcels to homes throughout the
UK.
A
Nationwide network:
Home Delivery Network has two
independently operated networks for parcels over and
under 25kg. 58 parcel depots and three specialised
two-man hubs deliver and collect items throughout the
UK. This includes the Highlands and Islands, Channel
Isles and Northern Ireland and British Forces Posted
Overseas addresses.
Our drivers’ detailed local
knowledge enables them to deliver items direct to
customers, or if required, leave with a neighbour or in
a secure location. Our drivers cover the same route
every day developing their specialist knowledge of the
area so your parcel should never get lost or be
delivered later than advised.
More than 1.8 million larger
items such as garden furniture, white goods, flat-pack,
conservatory furniture are delivered via our two-man
Specialised Operations team each year.
Find out
more:
To find out more about Home
Delivery Network Limited, our services and how you could
be part of the growing team, please visit the website at
www.hdnl.co.uk
LSDG occupies one of Europe's largest
warehouse distribution centres from which it can deliver its stock to its
customers. This complex, known to the company as Shaw National Distribution
Centre. is found in Shaw and Crompton, in the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham,
Greater Manchester. It comprises three former cotton mills and a number of
state-of-the-art stock handling facilities, and is supported by strong
geographic positioning and well served local transport links.
LSDG also owns a further former mill in
the Oldham area - Raven Mill, in Chadderton, which it uses for processing
returned goods.
On 9 May 2006, the company announced the
closure of three warehouses in Eccles, Wigan and Worcester. These closures are
planned for 2007, with all operations being transferred to their Shaw and
Crompton location. Around 1,200 jobs are being lost from the closures, but 300
jobs are to be created at the Shaw and Crompton distribution centre.
LSDG has recently invested in a new
state-of-the-art head office, Skyways House, a £31 million renovated aircraft
hangar, situated in Speke, South Liverpool . The Speke site also houses a state
of the art computer data centre. The group sold the original Littlewoods Head
Office in Liverpool (SJMB) to Bruntwood Estates, Littlewoods have retained 2 floors in
that building due to lack of space in Speke, it also has a data centre adjacent
to The Plaza (SJMB as was) and has other offices in Manchester although these
are due to close by mid 2007.
In terms of call centres all are based in
the UK and are in Burnley, Preston, Sunderland, Newtown and Worcester. All these
call centres are moving onto the same computer platform, this process is
expected to be completed by mid 2007.[citation
needed]
Trivia
The
National Football Museum in Preston, Lancashire, holds a Littlewoods
Collection which chronicles the history of the
Littlewoods Pools business. Preston also being home to one of the
Littlewoods Shop Direct Group head offices.
In August 2006 LSDG closed the former shop
direct head office Arndale and some staff
relocated to the new Speke site.
Our Locations
Speke - South Liverpool
Skyways House
Speke Road
Speke
Liverpool
L70 1AB
Skyways switchboard: 0870 263 1000
Head Office
Skyways House is the £31m state-of-the-art
head office for Littlewoods Shop Direct Group. Originally built in 1939, the
breathtaking grade II listed former aircraft hanger and its adjacent facility,
Skyways 2, are modern, air conditioned, open and friendly environments where
everyone can flourish and develop with flair and creativity. Skyways has a
number of onsite facilities for employees, ranging from a restaurant, to coffee
shops and services such as massage and dry cleaning. There is a modern gym next
door to Skyways, which has a large range of facilities available to members – 7
days a week.
Skyways is serviced by a good public
transport system to and from Liverpool and Manchester, and is only a five minute
taxi journey away from Liverpool John Lennon Airport, which has regular
scheduled flights from London City Airport.
If you are visiting Skyways, please
click here to
download the local directions map.
Warehousing
We have eight warehousing and returns
centres throughout the UK, which store and process orders taken online or via
the telephone from our brands. Our National Distribution Centre in Shaw, North
Manchester, is a state-of-the-art facility and stores over 1 million sq ft of
products, ready for delivery through our distribution arm,
Home Delivery
Network Limited.
Contact centres
Littlewoods have seven
contact centres throughout the UK operating seven days a week, taking
orders and advising customers of the latest special offers and products
available from our brands.
To view our full map of UK operations please
click here to download
the map. (pdf - opens in a new window)
*Please note the size of this pdf map is
approx. 1Mb. Therefore if you are browsing with a standard 56k modem, you may
have to wait up to 2 and a half minutes for the map to download. Broadband users
will have to wait less than 1 minute for the map to download.
Our Business
Business summaries
Littlewoods Shop Direct
Home Shopping Limited - We are a dedicated home shopping
organisation that puts our customers at the heart of the
business
Home Delivery Network
Limited is the UK’s largest home delivery company, delivering to
every postcode… every working day
Optimum Contact Solutions
Limited is the customer services company that supports
Littlewoods Shop Direct Home Shopping’s brands
Everyday Financial
Solutions Limited offers customers of Littlewoods Shop Direct
Home Shopping Limited brands a wide range of credit, insurance
and warranty products
CDMS specialises in
providing responsive marketing services in the areas of customer
data and campaign management, document services and direct mail
Source Direct
International Limited (SDIL) is the far east-based sourcing
operation for Littlewoods Shop Direct Home Shopping Limited
Source Direct
International Limited (SDIL)
Source Direct
International Limited
(SDIL) is the far east-based sourcing operation for
Littlewoods Shop Direct Home Shopping Limited. SDIL
employs over 170 people and operates from Asia ,
with offices in Tirupur, Bangkok, Delhi, Dhaka, Hong
Kong and Shanghai.
In order to provide
our customers with great quality products at
excellent prices, the team at SDIL
is helping Littlewoods Shop Direct Home Shopping
Limited grow the proportion of our business that is
bought directly
from manufacturers. By finding suppliers in over a
dozen countries then getting designers and engineers
to work on product development and manufacturing,
the SDIL team is ensuring that the products we buy
for our customers combine style, function and
quality at affordable prices.
Contact Us
Customer
feedback
Are you waiting for a parcel?
Please note that if you are
enquiring about an undelivered
parcel, please contact the
sender of your parcel (the
retailer you purchased your
product from) or email
escalatedqueries@hdnl.co.uk.
If you have been given a 13 or
16 digit tracking number, please
use the Home Delivery Network
parcel tracking service
available on
www.hdnl.co.uk
We want to hear from you,
whether its a comment about our
service, a product we sell or
one of our websites.
Littlewoods Shop Direct Home
Shopping Limited is dedicated to
providing a first class service
to its customers, from ordering
online or through one of our
books, to delivery by one of our
3,500 friendly drivers.
Are you a Customer with an order
query?
If you are a a customer who has
a query about your order with
any of our online and home
shopping brands, you can call
our customer services department
7 days a week and speak to an
advisor. Please call the
relevant number listed below:
Brand name
Telephone number
Opening hours
Abound
0845-300-5050
24 hours a day, 7 days a
week
Additions Direct
0870-413-5000
24 hours a day, 7 days a
week
Choice
0800-0922-622
7am - 11pm, 7 days a
week
Choice for You
0870-33-33-725
7am - 11pm, 7 days a
week
Great Universal
0800-0922-622
7am - 11pm, 7 days a
week
Great Universal
Essentials
0870-33-33-725
7am - 11pm, 7 days a
week
Kays
0800-0922-622
7am - 11pm, 7 days a
week
Kays Lifestyle
0870-33-33-725
7am - 11pm, 7 days a
week
Littlewoods
08457-888-222
7am - 11pm, 7 days a
week
Littlewoods Direct
08705-99-11-11
7am - 11pm, 7 days a
week
Marshall Ward
0844-811-8112
7am - 11pm, 7 days a
week
If you have any queries,
comments or complaints about the
service that any of our brands
have provided to you, please
contact us remembering to
include:
Littlewoods
work with thousands of suppliers
throughout Europe and the far east that
provide us with a large range of
high-quality fashion and sports
garments, home furnishings and
electrical goods.
In order
for us to continue providing the highest
quality goods at affordable prices, we
are always looking to engage new
suppliers who can provide us with the
highest quality products our customers
expect from any of our leading brands.
Existing
supplier?
If you
are an existing supplier and you utilise
our supplier web portal, please visit
www.littlewoodshomeshopping.com to
access the site.
Are you
interested in becoming a
Littlewoods
supplier?
If you
are a supplier of clothing, furniture,
electrical goods or accessories that you
think would suit our brand's profiles
(see Our Brands to view the
brand websites), please email details of
your company, products you supply, any
accreditations you have (local or
international) and contact details to
our Supplier Team -
supplierenquiries@littlewoods.co.uk.
The quiet revolution that unshackled women from the drudgery of constant home
management started unpromisingly. The western world toiled in the throes of the
greatest slump in history. Britain was still in the grip of painful transition.
Its 44 million people saw their traditional industries, practices and life
patterns clouded in uncertainty.
Almost a generation after the First World War, the population of the United
Kingdom remained unbalanced. There way." universal suffrage, yet women were
forbidden to vote until they reached the age of 30.
The theory that any career was open to a woman was a sham: she could not, for
example, practice on the Stock Exchange. In other professions, and especially in
industry, discrimination was widespread and blatant.
One Briton in two lived in towns of 50,000 people or more. Four fifths of the
nation crowded into the 5m acres of the major conurbations, and about half had
never traveled more than 50 miles from the places where they were born.
Homes and possessions combined -the assets of three quarters of the British
people were valued at less than £100 each yet just one per cent of their fellow
countrymen owned two thirds of the nation's wealth.
The first electronic medium of mass home entertainment, radio, was ten years
old, and the BBC's newsreaders were required to wear dinner jackets before the
microphone.
The United Kingdom was ostensibly a Christian country. There were 8m
confirmed members of the Church of England in 1932, including 3m regular
communicants; 2.5m Roman Catholics; and 2m members of the free churches.
But church attendance was in decline, and the true deities of the age, the
shining paradigms held up to women, were Hollywood film stars. Through the
medium of the cinema, a world beyond the experience, beyond even the dreams of
ordinary people became almost tangible. For a few precious hours a week, a
housewife could step off the treadmill.
And Littlewoods launched its first home shopping catalogue.
HARD LABOUR
Women accepted that it was their fate to work from morning to night looking
after the family and home, with few labour-saving devices to help them. There
were no washing machines or tumble driers in those days.
Huge kettles or copper boilers were heated up, and clothes washed and
scrubbed by hand, then squeezed through a mangle and hung out on lines to drip
dry. They were taken down still damp, and ironed using bulky steam irons or flat
irons that had to be warmed on the fire.
Even if the family home had electricity - which millions did not vacuum
cleaners and shampooers were not widely available, so rugs and carpets were
draped over the same washing line and beaten clean.
In the kitchen, virtually everything was done by hand. There were no food
processors, mixers or microwave cookers, few electric cookers, and no
dishwashers, refrigerators or freezers.
Dixons
Electical was not on the high street in the 1930s.
THE LONG TRUDGE HOME
Shopping was a grind rather than a pleasure. Even big towns boasted no more
than a handful of stores, and there were no supermarkets where most of a
housewife's weekly purchases could be bought under one roof at one visit.
Buying food for just a couple of days could mean trudging round half a dozen
widely-scattered shops. With very few families owning a car, large-scale
shopping expeditions were in any case out of the question.
A system of shopping that did not involve grueling trips to the high street
laden with young children as well as heavy packages, was at the very least
unappealing...
Home shopping became the housewife's saviour and today it is big business,
worth billions of pounds a year, yet it still fulfills its original purpose of
60 years ago: to supply a vast range of goods to people in their own homes, and
so allow women more leisure time through easier shopping.
CATALOGUES OF REVOLUTION
There have been dramatic changes in almost every aspect of family life over
the past three generations but, 60 years ago, when the social revolution was
restlessly stirring, conditions were indeed ripe for change.
"An analysis of Littlewoods' mail order catalogues over that entire period
shows just how significant those changes have been", said social historian Denis
Frost. "Today's average housewife and mother spends only three hours a day
cooking and doing the housework.
"That would have been unthinkable for her counterpart in the early 1930s, who
was no more than a slave to the housework. Without a doubt, the advent of home
shopping has made an impressive contribution to the social revolution for
women".
JOHN MOORES -THE HOUSEWIVES' SAVIOUR
Already
flourishing in America through Sears Roebuck, mail order shopping became an
important sector of the retail trade in Britain with the entry into the market
of Littlewoods in 1932.
John Moores, the millionaire founder of Littlewoods Pools, had taken the
afternoon off to join his brother, Cecil, on their favourite links. Moores later
recalled the occasion, set in the context of an untypical boredom with his
business life.
"It gave me no happiness merely to toss money around... but there didn't seem
to be anything to worry about any more. Well, I just had to find something..."
Moores' mind went back to his days as a Post Office telegraph clerk at
Waterville Cable Station, a lonely outpost in Country Kerry on the south-west
coast of Ireland. A bachelor of 22, he was appointed "mess president" when he
led a protest about the quality of the local food.
Moores reorganized the catering, then created "The Waterville Supply
Company", ordering necessities like household linen, shoes and socks, toilet
articles, sports goods and even library books direct from Dublin and England.
The company flourished and provided him with the £1,000 he later needed to
launch his pools empire.
On the golf course, he said to his brother: 'Cecil, I'm going back into the
mail order business, starting from scratch with an office, a typist and a little
warehouse. I'll see if I can make another million from nothing!'
"It was not enough to be a millionaire at the age of 35. I felt I had to
prove to myself that it was more than a mere fluke. Besides, one cannot retire
at 35..."
FIRST STEPS
Littlewoods Mail Order Stores Limited started trading from rooms over a shop
in Whitechapel, Liverpool, with a share capital of £20,000. Their brand of home
shopping took root in prepared and fertile ground. It emphasised (and still
does) the striking difference between the way the business is operated here,
compared with North America and the rest of Europe.
Abroad, the vast majority of sales are made from catalogues issued direct to
customers. In Britain, catalogues are held by literally millions of "agents",
who show them to relatives, friends and neighbours, collect orders and payments
and receive a commission of at least ten per cent. The reasons for this
unorthodox form of trading are mainly historical.
In the 1920s, particularly in the North
of England, the great majority of people were desperately poor. The average
national wage was a mere £175 a year for a minimum 48-hour week.
THE
TALLYMAN COMETH
It was a constant struggle to stretch a man's pay packet to feed his family,
let alone clothe them adequately and leave something over for holidays and the
few labour-saving devices that had started to come on to the market. To buy
clothing, people turned to the "club men" -representatives of firms that issued
"credit cheques".
These cheques, usually valued at £1, were accepted by certain local clothing
and footwear shops instead of cash. The issuing firm rarely charged its
customers less than a shilling (5p) in the pound borrowed, and this was expected
to be repaid weekly until the debt was discharged. It was one of the earliest
forms of credit for the common people, and by no means the(' only one in the
field.
The clubs flourished alongside other practitioners like t he "Scotch Draper"
or the "Tallyman" hustlers who sold goods on the doorstep, financing from their
own pockets short periods of credit, usually at extortionate rates of interest.
Companies like
Littlewoods
realized that these credit salesmen often landed their customers in far worse
debt -but also answered a need, which the large credit institutions ignored.
WOMEN JOIN THE WAR EFFORT
"CLUBS" FOR ALL"
The first postal shopping firms grew from a combination of these ideas. They
supplied a simple catalogue -a printed list of clothes and household goods,
without illustrations -to anyone' wishing to form a club. John Moores operated
on the system of grouping people together in "shilling clubs" for making weekly
bulk orders from the Littlewoods catalogue. Cannily, he raided his pools mailing
list for names to recruit as organisers. Their task was to form the clubs from
the ranks of relatives and friends.
With twenty members overwhelmingly women -each taking one or more shares in
the club, the organiser collected enough for £1-£2 worth of goods each week.
Members then drew lots to decide the order in which they would receive their
goods and it was this feature that gave rise to the name of "turns clubs".
Organisers sent their cash to Littlewoods, and each of the 20 members got her
goods before she had finished paying for them except the one with last turn on
the list. The organiser was rewarded with a discount off her own purchases, paid
by Littlewoods. The cost of postage , carriage and packing was normally included
in the price of the goods.
So began the modern home shopping industry -and its growth was
phenomenal. But the linchpin has always been and will continue to be -the
catalogue.
The first
Littlewoods catalogue
sas published in May, 1932. It had only 168 pages -contrasted with the bumper
1992 catalogue at 1068 pages. Nonetheless, the full range of catalogues
constitutes a remarkable historical record.
Take the humble washing-day iron: the 19;32 catalogue offered a flat iron, a
nickel-plated gas iron and, a newcomer to the shops, an electric steam iron, all
weighing between 4lbs and 5 1/2Ibs, and each costing the princely sum of ten
shillings (50p). One bargain even threw in a free ironing board.
In fact, ten shillings proved an amazingly popular price. This was, after
all, the era of burgeoning mass production, with shops like Woolworth's claiming
to sell nothing costing more than sixpence, and a two-course meal (roast beef
and veg, plus dessert ) available at a Lyons teashop for just a shilling.
Moreover, there were free gifts in abundance: the Daily Express gave a pair
of silk stockings to 10,000 lucky readers, and between them the Daily Mail and
the News Chronicle sent out more than ;300,000 free sets of the works of Charles
Dickens. Trains ran on time, too -and quickly: in 1932 the Flying Scotsman sped
from London to Edinburgh in 7hrs 27Illins.
But if the catalogue' had been born in an era of doubt and confusion, the
succeeding ten years were only a shade more comfortable for the people of
Britain. Across the Channel the mid-;30s was the age of the dictator... Franco
in Spain, Mussolini in Italy, Adolf Hitler in Germany. The United Kingdom moved
out of recession, wages steadied a little (though jobs were still in short
supply), and life began to be, if not sweet, then at least a bit more fun for
the ordinary people, that is; the rich had never stopped having fun.
Commercial air flights from London to most European cities coincided with the
launch of the 72,000-ton ocean liner, Queen Mary. More than 15m Britons took an
annual holiday and, in 1937, an almost unbelievable total of 425 special
excursion trains ran on August Bank Holiday to Blackpool alone!
The National Trust was created, the zip fastener invented, the Crystal Palace
burned to the ground, and the unemployed marched from Jarrow to London.
The cinema attracted an astonishing 30m patrons every week. The Marx Brothers
and Shirley Temple were at the height of their formidable powers. In England,
the most popular authors were Agatha Christie and three men whose first names
never appeared on a title page: P G Wodehouse, J B Priestly and A J Cronin.
For women, nothing much changed except the fashions... Perhaps the most
welcome bargain for Littlewoods
club customers in those days was the "Surprise Bedding Bale" of 1932 and beyond.
It is worth detailing the contents: pair of soft, fleecy blankets; pair of
sheets; two pillows; two pillow cases; bolster case; four towels; wadded quilt;
Alhambra quilt; Jasper bedspread; sideboard cover; four-piece dressing table
set; six teacloths; six dusters; tablecloth; and two cushions: all 24 articles
for just £2, delivered to the door.
The catalogues of the period flourished a Motto and a Guarantee couched in
the same baroque language. Said the Motto: "We hoist our Flag in the Port of
Supply, and right away we sail to the Ports of Demand -the Homes of the People.
We intend to help the homely folk of this country help them to obtain some of
the profits made by manufacturing and trading... to save money on things they
must have.
"This Catalogue is our Ship... staffed by an All-British crew... You won't
find sleepy, old-fashioned goods carried in the LITTLEWOODS ship. Only the
newest of the new goods -honest, British-made merchandise."
The "No Quibble -Money Returned" Guarantee promised, in Gothic script, that
"every article described in this Catalogue is fairly and accurately described.
If a piece of furniture is described as 'oak throughout', it is all oak. If a
garment is described as 'wool' it is pure wool and all wool".
In 1935, with the mail order system proving both efficient and hugely
successful, John Moores sent a personal message to his club organisers. It ran:
Undoubtedly, today, I regard it as the plain duty of all with money to spend, to
put that money in to active circulation, and so to help in trade recovery. Our
duty is to create employment for others... by spending. To those with courage to
do so, I believe the rewards were never so great. Markets and prices are
phenomenally low. Money wisely spent today is well spent."
By this time, as well as the "shilling clubs", there were "two shilling" and
"three shilling" versions, raising £2 and £3 a week for 10 or 20 weeks, all
operating on the same system of "turns", whereby each organiser conducted a draw
to choose a member to receive her goods after the first weekly payment (perhaps
of only a shilling), another after the second week -and so on, leaving just one
unlucky lady as last "turn" who had to pay for all her purchases before
receiving them.
But then, she stood first in line for the next draw... The 1932
Littlewoods home shopping catalogue
contents list alone is a snapshot of the age. It runs from Ax minster Rugs to
Writing Desks, and optimistically perhaps, considering the clientele, includes
such items as" Afternoon Frocks, Housemaid's", dinner waggons and "Dress,
Matron's Art, Silk".
Organisers were evidently expected to have rich relations. They were also
required to be precise in their orders. Said a 1935 instruction: "Organisers
should always help their club members with any necessary measurements to ensure
that the goods are correctly ordered".
They're warned to be on the lookout for special points: "Bedsteads -wooden
and iron; mattresses, wool and wire: state size and kind. Electric irons and
bowl fire -supplied in three voltages. Chenille curtains, table covers, quilts:
state colour required".
In 1932, John Moores rented his Liverpool rooms for the mail order operation
for £3 a week, and staffed them with five girls from the Pools business. He sent
out 20,000 letters to selected Pools clients, received 245 replies, and formed
17 clubs. With takings of £35 for the first week he was well in profit.
Moores paid close attention to every aspect of the business. He recalls: "We
examined everything carefully. I remember sitting and stripping off the leather
sole of a shoe with my penknife, to make sure it actually did have triple soles,
as advertised".
He confessed he was "having the time of my life". Within four months they
moved headquarters five times, seeking bigger premises as the business began to
grow. By the end of that year, turnover had topped £100,000.
THE MASSES' MILLIONS
Moores celebrated by sailing for America to see the Sears and Roebuck and
Montgomery Ward (Chicago) operations at first hand. By the end of 1934, annual
turnover was £400,000. Early in 1936, the business hit the £4m mark... and John
Moores had made his mail order million.
It irked him that he had to pay other wholesalers and retailers for his
catalogue goods, so Moores resolved to get into the chain store business
himself. The first Littlewoods
store was opened in Blackpool in 1937, and by 1939 there were 24 scattered
throughout the country, each with its own restaurant.
In what Winston Churchill later called the "wilderness years", life in
Britain proceeded at a stately pace, blissfully unaware of the fury to come.
Royalty was as popular as ever: 1935 saw the Silver Jubilee of King George V,
and the nation obligingly celebrated.
Ramsay MacDonald resigned as Prime Minister to make way for Stanley Baldwin,
who went to the country that year and gained a massive majority (432 seats to
154) for the National Government in what would be the last General Election for
ten years. Early the next year, the King died and was succeeded, briefly, by
King Edward VIII.
With the abdication of Edward VIII behind them and King George VI on the
throne, nine homes out of ten in Britain were able to tune into BBC radio and
hear the Savoy Orpheans, Henry Hall's Guest Night, Gracie Fields and the new
generation of wireless comedians and, of course, news bulletins.
Two thirds of all adults read a national daily newspaper. Fleet Street's
weekday circulation stood at 10.5m. Borrowing of library books had risen to more
than 200m a year. People were no longer ignorant or unaware. They had no wish to
fight another war but they knew one was inevitable.
One important difference from World War I was to lie in the self perceptions
of women, the part they played in the war, and society's appreciation of their
role. Ultimately, the contribution made by women to the war effort proved every
bit as influential and decisive as that of the fighting men.
Britons approached the war at home with some reserve. The Civil Defence
apparatus managed to distribute 38 million gas masks, but the blackout was an
unwelcome and hazardous intrusion: 'by the end of 1939, one fifty of the
population had suffered some form of accident connected directly with the
blackout -and not a single bomb had fallen on Britain.
LITTLEWOODS AT WAR
Without hesitation, the Moores brothers resolved that their company would
make an exceptional contribution to the war. Years later, John Moores wrote:
"The Government had already taken over our Edge Lane building housing over 2,000
staff... I said: 'There's only one thing to do... scrap the lot and offer our
huge organisation for war work'. "Thousands of men and women did their war
service in the Littlewoods Army.
We made Wellington bombers and saw them fly. We made rubber rescue dinghies and
tested them ourselves in the cold North Sea waters. And we made barrage balloons
at a time when they had priority over every kind of armament".
The company's final score was truly astonishing: 12 million shells, 5 million
fuses, 20,000 barrage balloons, 5 million parachutes, 50,000 rubber dinghies,
25,000 vehicle packages for transportation, 750 Wellington bomber bodies and
4,000 pontoons and storm boats.
Moores was proud that his women employees had performed so magnificently.
"Lancashire girls could wield engineers' hammers as quickly and deftly as any
man", he said. "The quickest mailer in the entire Liverpool division was a girl.
Women sat splicing ropes -a job that had never in history been done by any but
skilled craftsmen and broke all speed records".
Later in the war, they even took over the job of feeding the troops,
switching their Crosby balloon cutting factory over to making 13,000 "Pacific
food packs" a day for the men in the fighting zones of Burma and the Pacific.
BUSINESS AS USUAL
Morale was a vital aspect of the Government's propaganda war on the Home
Front, and businesses such as
Littlewoods, which maintained so close a contact with the people, were
encouraged to carry on normal trading if they could. The entertainment business
certainly tried to do that: the Windmill Theatre never closed, and David O
Selznick's "Gone With The Wind" ran throughout most of the war.
Despite the material shortages, conditions were favourable for the mail order
operation: there was hardly any inflation during the 1930s, so consumers were
able to buy a wide range of goods at prices which, in 1940, had changed little
over the eight preceding years.
In June of that year, Moores wrote to his organisers: "Littlewoods...
are contending with great difficulties just now... we must issue a new
Supplementary Catalogue of Furniture, Household and Hardware goods... And here's
a tip: you and your members would be well advised to snap up what you require
from this new catalogue now, for under present conditions it is quite impossible
to say what the position will be in the near future".
Home shoppers quickly spotted that the new prices were so good that they
could hardly last. A fireside chair, for instance, still cost 401- (the same as
in 1932); a settee was £5, and a three-piece suite £8. A double bed was offered
at 601-, with another 401- for the flock mattress; and a pair of blanket was
priced at 131- (against 101- before).
Electric toasters and hair dryers were now available at 101/- and vacuum
cleaners, at 601/-, cost no more than they did in 1932. Gas boilers, like lawn
mowers, had gone up by only 51/-. Baby carriages were now 30/-, and deluxe prams
sold at 90/-. Box cameras were popular at 10/-, the same price as a toddler's
tricycle and a man's wrist watch, and the latest lightweight tent still cost
only 30/-. A 34-piece tea set and a 23-piece dinner service were each priced at
20/-. diamond rings were available at 30/-, oil-burning stoves at between 20/-
and 40/-, and a huge range of gardening equipment, from rollers to wheelbarrows
and lawn mowers, sold over a range of 25/- to 50/-. And the old, reliable gas
iron was still only 10/-.
Warily, the clubs got back to work amid the new hazard of the blitz. London,
Bristol, Coventry, Plymouth, Southampton and Liverpool were all hit, hard and
repeatedly. So, later, were Exeter, Bath, N Norwich, York, Canterbury and other
historic towns, large and small. In Liverpool, not one of the Littlewoods
buildings escaped the bombs. Britain's South East Asian empire fell but America
entered the war and, by 1944, a further 1.5m potential customers had arrived in
England -most of them American soldiers.
POST -WAR BLUES
In 1948, when the National Health Service was set up, it was calculated that
the standard of living of the average working class family had risen by only 10%
over the entire decade, while that of salaried earners had actually fallen in
real terms by 20%. With its manufacturing potential drastically weakened by war,
the nation imported five times more goods than it had in 1939, and had seen its
exports drop by half the prewar volume.
There were, however, compensations: a young couple could rent a luxury flat
in Chelsea (three bedrooms, living room, kitchen and bathroom) for 16/6 a week.
The birthrate rose by a third -and the shopping revolution took an unexpected
new twist, with self-service shopping starting to rival the home shopping
facilities of the mail order firms. The strength of the armed forces had dropped
from an astonishing 5m to 1m, and still included tens of thousands of women.
The
Littlewoods catalogue of
that year showed how tight money had become, with manufacturers starting the
unwelcome trend of slipping an odd shilling on to a round figure sum -or, even
worse, moving up to just under the next round figure.
Thus, the box camera of the year was 51/-, a bicycle came priced at 51/-, and
the traditional lightweight tent was yours for 69/- Cultured pearl necklaces
that cost 20/- a few years before were now 27/6.
There were, on the other hand, new and exciting purchases on offer: electric
shavers for 60/- and 97/- and an exotic combined infrared and radiant heat lamp
for £5 3s 6d. A decent chair could cost as much as £6 15s and a small,
cylindrical electric vacuum cleaner, with attachments, was now £10 l5s. The best
quality pram in the catalogue was listed at £6 9s 6d. Above all, home shopping
remained what it had always been keenly competitive.
Research of the time indicated that women's self-perceptions, and thus the
attitudes which they influenced, were slow to change after the enormous impact
of their wartime experiences. They believed their status and success were
dependent on men, and the other members of their family still came first.
Typically, the "dream" career of a young girl was to be an air hostess,
providing a channel for escape .from a humdrum life to an admittedly largely
fantasy world "outside".
LEISURE AND THE LABOUR SAVING DEVICE
In the home, the potential for growth in labour-saving devices was massive.
In the early 1950s the majority (60%) of homes still had no electric vacuum
cleaner, and 14% were even without an electric iron, though plenty of cheap
old-fashioned irons were available.
When it first appeared, the ballpoint pen was expensive (£1.74), and the
introduction of the long-playing record caused consternation among collectors of
cherished 78rpm classics.
There was a deep hunger for class entertainment and top sporting events, and
although radio was king, the stage was being subtly set for the advent of
television.
The steam had gone out of the post-war Labour political machine and Clement
Attlee, tired and disillusioned, saw the country return to Conservative rule. At
the age of 77, Winston Churchill once more became Prime Minister. In 1952, King
George VI died and his elder daughter, Princess Elizabeth, inherited the throne.
"She is", Churchill remarked, "only a child". Her coronation the following year
set, as Philip Ziegler remarked, "new standards for the splendor of its
spectacle and the total involvement of the people".
For most spectators, it was their first contact with royalty on so grand a
ceremonial scale and it was made all the more novel and tantalising through the
medium of television.
THE TELEVISION AGE
Suddenly the age of
television was born. The coronation was watched by almost half the
population on an estimated 2.7m TV sets, at what must have been an average of
seven or eight people to each set.
The nation, fed up with its vanishing empire, austerity and post-war decline,
was both united and delighted. By the middle of the decade the flourishing
social research industry had discovered that the poor of Britain were better
clothed, better fed, better cared for medically and better housed than before
the war.
Yet the richest 1% of the population still owned 43% of the private wealth in
the country and the richest 10% almost 80%. There were nearly 200,000 domestic
servants in large private homes.
Tea did not come off ration until 1952, with sugar and sweets following a
year later. Butter, cheese, cooking fat and meat stayed on ration unti11954.
Typically, as soon as there were plenty of these previously rationed foods
available consumption actually went down.
But the public appetite for television was unstoppable. Even as late as 1949,
two out of three Britons had never seen a television set. After the coronation
it was only a matter of time before TV licences outnumbered radio licences.
And by 1954, when the commercial service started in opposition to the BBC, the
die for the future was cast.
With TV advertising and greater prosperity came an explosion in consumer
goods, and a great many more labour-saving devices were on sale to make life in
the home easier for a housewife and her family and thus provide more time for
leisure and relaxation.
By sociological consent, the lower and middle classes were more prosperous at
the start of the 1960s than ever before. Young people, particularly, saw their
wealth amount at last to a formidable size, and they made the most of it.
There were not many houses without indoor lavatories, running water and
electric light. And fridges, vacuum cleaners and electric kettles had long since
ceased to be luxuries. Television and the telephone were standard facilities in
the vast majority of homes and a majority of families owned a car. Schools were
more modem and better equipped. National Service ended, and Life Peers began.
In 1964 4m Britons holidayed abroad; while at home almost 200,000 caravans
took to the summer roads (including the new motorways) after Dr Richard Beeching
had destroyed the railway network by closing huge numbers of stations and vital
branch lines. The satirical magazine Private Eye was founded in 1962, a year
before the Beatles answered the call of the young for their own icons.
CREDIT VERSUS THE 'NEVER NEVER
Britain was becoming
a credit driven society, and in the decade up to 1962, Moores opened three new
credit businesses offering delivery of goods in advance of even one payment (a
facility which beat the "never-never" arrangements of the hire purchase
traders).
Bob Lancaster, Director-
Home Shopping Division,
Littlewoods Catalogue, sees this move from cash to credit as a significant
break with the traditions of the "shilling clubs". "Looking back, it was perhaps
the most important single development in the history of home shopping".
Littlewoods celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in 1962 with Spring and
Autumn catalogues offering a choice of articles that would have been
unimaginable when it was launched.
Home Shopping eagerly embraced the emerging marvels of electronic
engineering, and the 1962 Spring volume listed transistor radios at £12/12; one
of the first compact car radios at £21 10/6; and tape recorders at £26/15/- (a
price which, 30 years later, would actually have fallen with the arrival of the
microchip!).
There were electronic irons at £57/6 and 51/-; lawnmowers from £5 to £13 5/6;
fashionable new cameras from £6 8/- to £16 17/-, against an end-of-era box
camera at 55/6. There was even a zoom cine camera at £55 and a projector for £34
13/-, with a slide projector listed at just under £20. An automatic teamaker was
priced at £20 5/-; an electric food mixer at £14/13/6; a liquidiser at £5 6/-;
and a 2kw convector heater at £5 17/-. Electric sewing machines listed at
£38/7/- and shoppers snapped up electric knitting machines at £31 10/-, together
with electric floor polishers at £17 13/-.
Truly portable electric typewriters sold for just under £20 and a
portable gramophone for £21. As more young people took to the great outdoors for
their holidays, sleeping bags (£6 17/6) and camp beds (£2 19/6) were popular
purchases. A twin tub washing machine (£90 13/- ) was reckoned to be within the
reach of most pockets on credit terms.
A 14% devaluation of the pound shattered Britain's insular complacency. The
outside world intruded (most spectacularly when a man walked on the moon, which
the nation saw on colour television) and the UK embarked once again on a course
of doubt and irresolution, compounded by an outbreak of savage violence in
Northern Ireland.
Economically, inflation started to matter as the cost of living rose. It
stood at 6.4% in 1970 but, by 1974, after decimalisation and a massive rise in
oil prices, inflation soared to 15.9%.
Littlewoods' 1972 catalogues were the last before Britain joined the Common
Market.
Catalogue shoppping once again reflected the increasing pace of electronic
innovation. They also mirrored the economic downturn and the effects of the new
currency.
But there were plenty of new lines on offer, including electric can openers,
coffee makers and hot plates; tumble driers and spin driers and the electric
overblanket joined the underblanket.
And home shopping maintained its competitive edge against not just the
supernarkets, but the discount houses too.
A portable radio was listed now as costing "£6.65, or 20 weeks at 33p a
week"; the traditional -but much flashier -three-piece suite cost £75.75, or
£1.51 a week over no fewer than 50 weeks. A Hotpoint
washing machine was priced at £131.29 (50 weeks at £2.52), and a Hoovermatic
at £10:3.85.
For parents of young families, a deluxe pram cost £19.95, a pushchair
£15.95, a playpen £19.60 and the first car babyseats £10.85. A trendy leather
swivel armchair was listed at £37.50 and a divan with headboard cost £29.95 (the
practice of rounding up to just under the next pound was firn11y entrenched).
For the kitchen, a 51-piece dinner and tea set was still very reasonably
priced at £9.85; a three-piece aluminium saucepan set cost £3.80 and a pressure
cooker £10.48. New gadgets included a food slicer for £5.50, sets of non-stick
pans for £7.99 and food mixers priced at £9.85.
An upright vacuum cleaner was listed at £41.80 and the most innovative gadget
of all, a dishwasher, cost £112.25.
Cine cameras were as plentiful as box cameras had once been and were listed
at a range from £43.30 to £79.65.
The "cabinet gramophone" had been refined into a sleek stereogram at £96.25
(50 weeks at £1.9:3).
At £7.85 an electric shaver cost twice as much as an iron; hair
curlers, anew invention, cost £8.70.
The first rotary clothes lines went on sale for £4.49, and the first garden
rotavators cost £69.95.
Other leisure and labour-saving devices included instant cameras from £4.30,
polaroids from £7.30, electric sewing machines from £36.95, and an electric
guitar at £24.05.
The cheapest man's watch was listed at £3 (£9.99 for a Swiss one), and a
young man could still buy a diamond engagement ring for £16.95.
FEMINISM
The early 1970s saw the politicisation of advertising's portrayal of life,
and a vigorous anger developing in the feminist movement's view of what
constituted the new male offences of sexism, racism, chauvinism, and
stereotyping.
Towards the end of the decade the rise of international feminism promised in
Britain another startling sea-change in feminine perceptions of a country where
the ruler and chief minister were women of extraordinary character and
accomplishment. Yet it was calculated that housewives still spent 40 hours a
week and walked 52 miles doing household chores, including no fewer than 21
hours in the kitchen alone.
Chicken replaced beef as the nation's favourite Sunday roast, and coffee
almost caught up tea as the preferred non-alcoholic drink. Hollywood started
specialising in disaster movies and "big" adventure films (The Towering Inferno,
The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, Jaws), and the drop in audiences was stemmed
as younger people forsook a night of TV for the exotic pleasure of 'going out.'
By 1976 there were 19 local radio stations. The contraceptive pill was widely
available: strangely, illegitimacy had increased threefold in the past 20 years
and the pill seemed unable to stem the flow of unplanned births. In 1975 15.5m
vehicles jammed the roads of Britain, and in the following year the Queen
pressed a button to start the flow of North Sea oil.
The view this months offers from from the
Littlewoods
catalogue and website click this link.
Margaret Thatcher replaced Edward Heath as leader of the Conservative Party.
The succeeding four years were scarred by an alarming level of industrial
disturbance under the Labour government of James Callaghan.
Feminists were, briefly, jubilant; it seemed they had only to grasp the
opportunity furnished by Mrs Thatcher's victory. The stage was set for a
realignment in social attitudes and traditional perceptions. Yet the impetus of
Thatcherism proved to be a false dawn. By temperament and inclination, Mrs
Thatcher was no feminist.
Women were now known to outnumber men by 25.83m to 23.9m, but the start of
the 1980s found only 23 women MPs in Parliament (and just one in the Cabinet),
no female judges, admirals or generals, hardly any directors of large companies
and not many stockbrokers, bankers and senior accountants.
Though outwardly more demonstrative and influential, women were unable to
storm the male-dominated citadels that really mattered. Under Mrs Thatcher it
was the young men who mainly prospered.
The 1980s began as violently as the previous decade had been at its close.
Unemployment rose dramatically and the inner cities of England (London,
Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol) erupted in rioting. Over the preceding 30 years
indictable crime multiplied by a factor of five. Divorce was commonplace,
especially among manual workers and the unemployed.
The silicon chip shrank to an electronic marvel called the microchip and
launched the second Industrial Revolution. Industrial systems were virtually
robotised, more people lost their jobs, and the computer dominated the movement
of money.
Yuppies (especially the City variety) took their careers seriously. They
didn't drink in working hours, or indulge themselves with expense account
lunches; they took up jogging, and popularised "designer" trainers. Women as
well as men, they brandished their prosperity and German BMW cars like offensive
weapons.
Yuppies set the keynote of a buoyant, inherently acquisitive and selfish
decade. Mrs Thatcher cooly stripped the trade unions of the vestiges of their
power and defeated the militant miners' leader, Arthur Scargill, as easily a--"
the press barons and their new technology destroyed the print unions in the
Fleet Street ...As inflation rates fell, so unemployment increased -to over 3
million in 1982.
Yet the British people were judged to be better fed, on a wider selection of
food, than at any previous time: freezer shopping opened up all sorts of
possibilities to imaginative shoppers; 90 of houses now had a fridge, most of
them with freezing capacity, or separate freezers.
Health foods were fashionable, linked to strident calls for conformity by
single issue faddists. But health generally improved and life expectancy
extended. Road accidents dropped and latest figures showed that 38% of men and
33% of women smoked cigarettes, compared with 52% and 41% a decade earlier. AIDS
appeared, and so did "mad cow disease".
Two thirds of the British people now bought their own homes; nine out of ten
households owned a television set, a fridge and a vacuum cleaner; 75% had a
telephone. Central heating in some form was the rule rather than the exception.
It was, in many ways, a more sophisticated nation, with 62% of its people
regularly travelling abroad.
Price rises over the previous decade were felt keenly in the Littlewoods
catalogues but, as always, the home shopping service provided not merely a more
convenient but also a cheaper altermative. Once again, leisure and personal
entertainment featured largely in the contents lists.
The Littlewoods Catalogue of this decade featured:
A set of golf clubs now cost £242 and an exercise bike £39.99.
An electric toothbrush for £22.99
A facial sauna from the catalogue for £13.99.
A half-size snooker table cost £ 115 and the latest computer games started
at £23.99.
The view this months offers from from the
Littlewoods
catalogue and website click this link.
There was even an electronic chess set for £39.99 and an
electric organ at £69.95. Personal stereos were introduced and quickly became
the accessory of the decade.
WOMEN IN SOCIETY - Launch of Littlewoods Extra now called Littlewoods
Direct
In the 60 years since the advent of home shopping the fortunes of the United
Kingdom had turned full circle, and the country was once again in recession.
Notwithstanding, there were further indications of change in t he political
and social perception of women.
They were already beginning to command a different kind of recognition in
society, on the labour market, and within the family.
The 'new woman' was now perceived as an individual, not just one in an
amorphous mass; someone with intelligence, ambition and a discrete -often viewed
by men as unpredictable personality.
From confinement in the closed domestic world, women were emerging to become
competitive in a society where the once powerful external pressures (peer group
disapproval, the compulsion to
Yet Thatcherism had bred a more conforn1ist society, and this was proving,
rather surprisingly for women, an advantage rather than an obstacle.
More women were to be found in executive roles in industry; successful
businesses were founded and controlled by women; some companies prospered in the
teeth of recession because they were manned solely by ambitious and skilful
women.
Perhaps the most significant sociological development affecting women has
been the weakening concept of the nuclear family. only four in ten British women
are now full-time housewives.
Furthermore, the percentage of women in paid employment has increased
steadily over the Past 20 years: and of the (j(f){) of women holding jobs, a
third identify their work as a career.
Women's disposable income has increased enorniously. In the present decade
women over 45 account for about £18 billion of annual expenditure; however this
group still makes 90% of grocery purchases.
But statistics still do not reflect the advances women have made. In the
decade from the mid-1970s the percentages of women in both top and middle
management positions actually fell and only since then had started slowly to
rise.
The new Parliament elected in April, 1992, contains fewer than l0% MPs - and
there are just two in John Major's Cabinet.
Against the backdrop of boom and recession years, home shopping in the United
Kingdom has grown from virtually nothing to a 4.3% share of the non-food retail
market.
Last year mail order sales nationwide totalled £3.566bn: Littlewoods'
share was £933m (28%). The Littlewoods Home Shopping Group publishes and
distributes seven catalogues, (including the Launch Littlewoods first direct
brand Littlewoods Extra, now rebranded as
Littlewoods
Direct) and they are one of the two largest mail order companies in the
country. There are between £5.5m and 6m part-time home shopping agents in the
UK, which means that one British household in five operates a mail order agency.
And 18m people -one out of every three adults -buy goods at some time from a
home shopping catalogue.
Nowadays they mostly order on the 'phone, so maintaining the invaluable human
contact with the organiser. Today, home shopping consumers are indeed faced with
a greater choice than they have ever been offered - at prices which "have to be
totally competitive with hypermarkets and high street discount houses, or the
system would simply not survive" (Bob Lancaster). A growing number of customers
now have access to credit and to meet this new demand and to widen the appeal
across the demographic spectum Littlewoods has developed a Direct Brand -
Littlewoods
Direct "And during a recession home shopping is a particularly attractive
option: extended credit over a long period for necessary purchases can often
make the crucial difference in a family's ability to survive". In 2007
Littlewoods extra was re-branded to Littlewoods Direct and the relaunched
with an advertising campaign featuring
Trinny and
Susannah - celebrity style gurus.
Littlewoods Spring 1992 catalogue (one of six now published by the group)
lists a massive array of clothing, labour-saving devices and leisure goods.
And compared with 1932, the cost of many articles has gone up by less than
the approximate hundredfold increase common to many sectors of the general
retail index. Wages and property prices have, of course, risen by a greater
multiple factor.
"What the catalogue still maintains is the relationship between price and
quality offering", says Littlewoods' Bob Lancaster. "for home shoppers all down
the years,
that has been an absolutely constant and reliable factor. There is no better
value anywhere".
The striking differences between 1932 and now lie in the sheer size of the
1992 catalogue (with more than 20,000 choices) and the huge range of
sophisticated equipment it carries, from computers at £499.99 and fax machines
from £399.99 to video camera from £449.99, a microwave cooker at £129.99 and a
water filtration system listed at £49.99.
The first catalogue's £2 gramophone has given way to a Sony Discman CD player
with 20track random music sensor, shuffle play and repeat LCD) display at
£1169.99.
The task of getting goods to over 2 million agents all over the UK mainland is
enormous. Littlewoods despatch more than 40 million parcels a year and 80,000 of
their agents are served by the group's own home delivery service, which has more
than 1,000 vans operating from 25 depots nationwide.
"THE SHOP THAT NEVER CLOSES"
Bob Lancaster, Director of Home Shopping at Littlewoods, believes home
shopping has kept fully in step with the changing social and domestic
requirements of consumers."With so many women working now, and living perhaps on
the periphery of an urban centre, home shopping has proved an immensely useful
and time saving way of buying practically any kind of household goods. "And, of
course, you can order wherever you have a catalogue handy... at home, in the
office or at the factory bench. There's absolutely no sales pressure and not a
single penny of prior payment, since everything you are sent is 'on approval'
until you say you want it. If you decide you don't need a particular article
then simply return it within the required period, at no cost". Bob Lancaster, is
convinced, too, that home shopping now crosses every socio-economic frontier and
penetrates every corner of the nation -"from duke to dustman, and .John
O'Groat's to
Lands End".
The view this months offers from from the
Littlewoods
catalogue and website click this link.
Changing social
behaviour means that shopping is one of a range of leisure activities and high
street shoppers are increasingly reluctant to carry their purchases home with
them as they head for the cinema or golf course. Rather they are increasingly
looking to home delivery to get their products home. However, the major drivers
of growth are expected to be:
growing penetration of the Internet in the UK,
the launch of new niche catalogues by entrepreneurs e.g. Boden
the growth of home shopping ventures from the major supermarket chains
e.g. Tesco
multi-channel retail development by established retailers e.g. John
Lewis
the development of interactive television services e.g. Thomas Cook
IS THIS GOOD NEWS FOR LITTLEWOODS CATALOGUE
The 'Big 5' mail order catalogue companies - GUS (Kays, Great Universal,
Marshall Ward, Additions, etc), Littlewoods (inc LX Direct, Index), Freemans,
Grattan, and Empire (Redcat UK), have been negativley affected by this increased
competition within the home shopping catalogue market place, and more
importantly the readily available credit to buy goods via credit and store
cards. The traditional "Agency" catalogue shopper now has more choice of both
good and credit terms.
Littlewoods Catalogue is responding to these challenges by reducing prices, and
updating there products lines, are they improving?
Go to Littlewoods Catalogue at catalogue connection to get view the highlights
from current Littlewoods catalogue, this site also reviews all the home shopping
mail order catalouge websites available in the UK.
ON-LINE AUCTION SITES
The advent of online auction sites such as ebay, has enbled customers to sell
unwanted catalogue products, it has also allowed catalogues to "sell-off" stock
at cheaper prices. Click this link to find current listings for
Littlewoods products on ebay
Magic Knickers
In 2007 Littlewoods used the TV style gurus
Trinny and
Susannah to re-launch the brand Littlewoods Direct and promote
Littlewoods.com whilstgiving the brands fashion overhall, and the strapline
"Famous for Big Brands"
(also known as Littlewoods Shop Direct
Group or LSDG) is a United Kingdom retail Limited company, based in Liverpool,
Merseyside, England.
Founded
by John Moores and his brother Cecil in 1923,
LSDG
currently operates a variety of home shopping brands, consisting of the former
Littlewoods brands, Littlewoods and
LX Direct, and the former Shop Direct
brands, Additions Direct, Abound,
Great Universal, Marshall Ward, Choice, and Kays. A sports website, called sport-e.com was also opened by the group in 2003.
abound
offers great shopping ideas for the fashion-conscious woman and her
family. There's an emphasis on fashion and style as the latest
catwalk looks meet cool home interiors - your edited contemporary
lifestyle is finally here. High Street brands such as Morgan, Oasis,
Miss Sixty and Diesel are mixed with in-house styles that are ideal
for must-have fashion lovers.
Additions
Direct offers 24-hour retail therapy with the latest high fashion,
home furnishings and top brand electrical products.
Great
Universal offers a department store in the convenience
of your own home with an attractive book and a
user-friendly website. 
Marshall
Ward offers a great range of stylish
clothes and products for the home. Shop
from the latest book or online where you
will find the recently relaunched
Berkertex range, an exclusive range of
clothes modeled by Twiggy and the latest
products to re-style your home.
Designed
with time-conscious customers in mind, the
new season book and website (www.littlewoodsdirect.com)
make it even easier to find all the
definitive looks from the catwalk and high
street.As well as the best choice of women's
fashions, the range also offers kidswear,
menswear, homewares, electronics, toys and
jewellery.
ranges such as the latest trainers, football gear, leisurewear and ladies gymwear - there is a wealth of choice available for your visitors. Sport-e.com is an authorised retailer for top brands such as Nike, Adidas, Puma and Reebok. We also offer one of the best commission rates around for this sector! Unfortunately Sport-e only deliver to the UK currently.
Spirit,
a charity working with disadvantaged teenagers. 
To
find out more information, click on one of the charities shown
Source Direct
International Limited
(SDIL) is the far east-based sourcing operation for
Littlewoods Shop Direct Home Shopping Limited. SDIL
employs over 170 people and operates from Asia ,
with offices in Tirupur, Bangkok, Delhi, Dhaka, Hong
Kong and Shanghai.
bought directly
from manufacturers. By finding suppliers in over a
dozen countries then getting designers and engineers
to work on product development and manufacturing,
the SDIL team is ensuring that the products we buy
for our customers combine style, function and
quality at affordable prices.
ing
a credit driven society, and in the decade up to 1962, Moores opened three new
credit businesses offering delivery of goods in advance of even one payment (a
facility which beat the "never-never" arrangements of the hire purchase
traders). 
