| Centenary of M&S Michael's death | |
MONDAY marks the 100th yahrzeit of one of the greatest traders Britain has ever seen - Marks & Spencers founder Michael Marks. It was one of the biggest Jewish funerals Manchester had known on January 2, 1908, when 35 carriages followed his coffin to Crumpsall cemetery. Michael, the son of Mordechai Marks of the Jewish shtetl of Slonim in the Russian-Polish province of Grodno, was only 47 when he died. He was a simple Jewish man who became a great British merchant prince and a revolutionary retailer. Michael left almost £30,000 in his will - worth £1 million in today's currency. He also left a reputation as a good and kind man who helped the poor - a model employer and a thoroughly trustworthy businessman. Today, M&S is the largest retailer based in the UK, with 400 stores in its home market. It sells clothing, footwear, gifts, home furnishings and food, with many of these items sold under the private label St Michael brand. The company also owns and operates nearly 100 additional M&S stores in Europe, Hong Kong, and Canada, and franchises 85 M&S stores in Europe, the Far East, Australia, Israel and the Middle East, the Bahamas, and Bermuda. It's all a far cry from the time a young, Yiddish-speaking Jew from the small, chassidic town of Slonim invented a new era in British and world retailing. Michael was born in 1859 (or possibly 1863 - both have documented sources) in Slonim. He was the youngest child of Mordechai Marks, a chassidic tailor, who also owned a share in a grain mill. As Michael's mother Rebecca died in childbirth, he was brought up by his older sisters Malka Beila and Esther. The family suffered the poverty and cruel antisemitism widespread in the Pale of Settlement and typical of the despotic Tsarist regime. At the time of Michael's birth, Slonim had more than 6,000 Jews, seven large synagogues, numerous shteibls and the usual array of charitable organisations, study circles, chassidic groups and chedarim. Mordechai Marks was blessed with arichas yamim (long life) and died in Slonim at the age of 100 in 1908 shortly after his youngest child. Michael's older brothers were Barnet and Ephraim. Barnet Marks was known from his youth as a great masmid (diligent student) and a baal chessed (kindhearted person), who was a role model for his baby brother. It was Barnet who indirectly led to the founding of Marks & Spencer when he left Slonim in 1881 after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II and the beginnings of the pogroms that swept across the western districts of the empire. Barnet decided to leave Poland for ever and migrated to England. From there he sent a message home outlining the freedom he found in London. Michael, inspired by this letter and still unmarried, left Slonim in 1882 and followed his brother to London, not realising that Barnet had already left for America. Barnet travelled to the goldene medina, settling first in Dawson City and later Los Angeles where he became a pillar of the fledgling Orthodox Jewish community. He was well into his nineties when he died. All five Marks children would eventually leave Russia for Britain and America. By 1884, Michael had left London and moved to Leeds - then a great centre of the wool industry and home to many poor but hard-working immigrant Jewish tailors. Physically frail, with his ruddy complexion, light brown hair and trim beard, Michael was unsuited to the harsh, steamy conditions of the sweatshops. So he chose to become an itinerant hawker, peddling his wares on a tray from town to town. But within a few months he had saved enough to rent a stall, 6ft x 4ft, in Leeds' Kirkgate market. The rent was 1s 6d (seven and a half pence) per week. Still unable to speak much English and haggle with his customers over prices, Michael chose to bundle up his wares in packages and had a large red and yellow sign painted that hung above the stall exclaiming: "Don't ask the price, it's a penny." The former Slonimer chassid thus invented both fixed price retailing and self-selection in Britain and launched his career as the proprietor of the famous chain of "Marks' Penny Bazaars". "Don't ask the price, it's a penny" was one of the most successful advertising slogans ever invented in retailing. It was striking, simple to understand and corresponded to a genuine need. Poor working-class women were no longer embarrassed by having to ask the price of goods and then being forced to decide whether they could really afford them. Today we are so used to seeing price labels fixed to items that we forget that this was invented by Michael Marks less than 125 years ago.
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MICHAEL: The immigrant who went on to become a tycoon | Site developed & maintained by MICHAEL PAYSDEN/FIREIMAGE | © 2007 Jewish Telegraph www.JewishTelegraph.com |
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