My name is Tommy Stuart. I'm Scottish, from Glasgow, and I'm 87 years old, Born August 31, 1938. I write that I'm from Glasgow, but the reality is that when I was about 24 years old, I moved to Stockport, where I have lived ever since.
My younger days were spent whilst the Second World War raged, living in a tenement building on Royston Hill, Glasgow. My mother and father worked in the Glasgow shipyards, and we were desperately poor. Everything in our house that had any value was kept in the pawnshop across the road from where we lived. When we needed anything, like my dad's only suit, it usually came out on a Friday (Payday) and went back in on Monday, when the wages were spent.
I was the family runner, receiving notes left by my mother, hurriedly scratched out on bits of paper before she left for work each morning.
“Take yur da’s suite tae uncle Loui’s” ( We called the pawnshop owner “Uncle” although he wasn’t. It was just that we used him so much the name developed.
“Ask him for 2.10 shillings, he’ll offer you £2.00, take it.
Peel the spuds and put them on the boil at 4.30.
Go tae Davy Tyrell’s and get some groceries. I’ve left you a separate note for him.
Scrub the kitchen and the living room floors, and I’ll give you sixpence when I come home.
That was “Training a young boy to become a future businessman; “By The Seat of his Pants”
My Business Launch Pad
Before I could wipe my nose, I was 16 years of age and having a good look at what sort of work I could get involved in. I ended up as an apprentice agricultural engineer, making and repairing farming equipment.
Every night I went home covered in grease, most of which seemed determined to still be there when I went back to work the following morning. After about six months of this, I decided it was time to have a look at what kind of world I had inherited.
So I packed my bag, left a very brief note and left home — never to return to live there again.
First I went to Edinburgh for two months, then on to Inverness, which is a story I must tell you about another day. The important thing is that, whilst in Inverness, I kept in touch with a pal I had met at school. He had moved to Stockport, just outside Manchester, and I decided to pay him a visit.
I have lived there ever since.
One evening, whilst sitting in my pal's house, we got into that familiar conversation most young men have sooner or later — the shortage of money.
I came up with the idea of visiting the area where shopkeepers and market traders went on Sundays to buy the merchandise they sold. I knew about such places because, in my younger days in Glasgow, I used to collect the empty wooden boxes the traders threw away and sell them as firewood.
The conversation ended with my friend and me agreeing to find out where such a place existed in Manchester and, provided we could scrape together enough money, visit it the following Sunday and start our first little business adventure.
I asked a local shopkeeper, who told me about the wholesalers around Bury New Road and Shudehill in Manchester. So the following Sunday, off we went.
When we arrived in the Shudehill area, I couldn't believe my eyes. Everywhere I turned, there was another shop, each specialising in something different. It seemed you could buy practically anything there at a knock-down wholesale price.
Before long, I had spent my entire £50 on ladies' fashion jewellery.
The following Sunday I was back with £80. The Sunday after that, I had £125 to spend.
I was hooked.
I began selling around the houses in Stockport, and while calling on my regular customers — and finding plenty of new ones — someone suggested that I should sell ladies' stockings.
Now, in those days, most young women bought stockings regularly. It was the era of suspenders and 15-denier nylon stockings which, if you were lucky, might survive an entire week.
So I found myself calling from house to house with different shades of nylons and sizes from 8 to 11. Rather unexpectedly, I had discovered a wonderful captive market. Once I was inside selling stockings, I found I could sell all sorts of other things as well.
Now It Becomes Exciting
Looking after so many pairs of legs was becoming exhausting, so I decided to sell the nylon-stocking enterprise.
I received a good price for it from an American chap who, as I recall, appeared to be hiding over here — although I thought it wiser not to ask too many questions!
By then I had people selling for me in their workplaces and to their neighbours. I was carrying so much stock that I eventually had to open a shop in Stockport, from where I began supplying local shopkeepers and market traders.
Then I started visiting the London wholesale community.
On one of those visits, I met Jose Oliveira, a Portuguese manufacturer of men's shirts. We had a very interesting conversation which ended with me placing an order for a container-load of inexpensive men's nylon shirts.
Just like that, I was an importer.
Two months later I was on a plane to Hong Kong to meet a manufacturer of rather classier men's cotton shirts. A month after that, I was travelling around wholesalers throughout the UK selling a fantastic range of men's shirts.
And when I thought about it, the whole thing seemed quite extraordinary.
t had started with £50 worth of jewellery bought one Sunday afternoon in Manchester.
Now I was supplying some of the very people I had once bought from — except there was one rather pleasant difference:
my orders were no longer £50. They were running into thousands of pounds.