Newspaper Article 1998 – Bon Marche thrived in ‘good old days’

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH Weekend

The Daily Telegraph, Saturday, September 12, 1998   13

Staff were family and customers were friends

Bon Marche thrived in ‘good old days’

When Hastings’ Bon Marche department store finally closed its doors three years ago, many said it was the end of an era. Now Bon Marche staff are preparing to gather for one day to celebrate the store’s 100th anniversary. Journalism student KATE ANDREWS reports on a Hawke’s Bay institution.

TO THE PUBLIC OF HASTINGS.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT.

I BEG to announce that I have disposed of my business to Mr M. JOHNSON (late of Blythe and Co.) and respectfully solicit a continuance of the liberal patronage to him you have generously bestowed on me in the past.

Respectfully yours,
S. RIDGWAY.

In reference to the above, I have much pleasure in intimating the fact that I have taken over Mr Ridgway’s business and intend to add DRAPERY to the stock. My long experience in Hastings is sufficient guarantee that my stock will be well assorted and
right UP-TO-DATE.

My Prices will be found to be as reasonable as any house in the trade, as my expenses will be small.

My Motto will be
SMALL PROFITS AND QUICK RETURNS.

Country orders will receive my special attention.

Inspection respectfully invited before purchasing elsewhere.

Yours faithfully,
M. JOHNSON

Opening Date – SATURDAY, Feb. 26.

STORE founder Matthew Johnson announces his purchase of the Heretaunga Street business in the Hastings Standard newspaper February, 1898.

Three years after Bon Marche’s demise, the Jones family still enjoys the kind of staff loyalty most top management only dream about.

When four former staff members got together to plan a centenary celebration for Bon Marche they did it for one reason: The Joneses.

“They’re special people,” explains organiser Nancy Walters, who was a buyer with the Napier shop for 22 years. “They were family and they treated their staff like family.”

Former owner Richard Jones says the feeling is mutual: “We had a family. We didn’t have workers and business…the management worked the same as the staff,” he says.

The Jones boys, Ross, Stewart, Bryce, and Richard, grew up around the shop established by their grandfather Matthew Johnson in 1898, doing odd jobs and helping out at the famous sales.

“The family lived and worked Bon Marche. That was our love,” says Richard Jones.

Most people who remember Bon Marche associate it with life before the world changed. For them it represented better times, pre-recession and pre-economic restructuring, when jobs were for life and people mattered.

The Bon Marche name first appeared when Jim Jones took over his father-in-law’s store, Johnson’s Drapery, in Hastings in 1928. The store was in the Heretaunga Street block now known as the East Mall. In 1935, the store moved further along the street to premises now occupied by Income Support. A Napier store opened in 1961 (television presenter Selwyn Toogood officiated).

Mr Jones recalls Bon Marche’s heyday as a time when business was fun. Goodwill existed between rival businesses and deals with manufacturers and suppliers were completed on a handshake.

“There was the sort of atmosphere that we all stood behind what we said and we stood behind the staff,” he says.

During Rod McBean’s 30 years with Bon Marche, in the latter years as manager of the Napier store, looking after the customer was always the priority.

“The chair was brought out for the customers when they were buying. So many customers were regulars we got to know them by name. We always welcomed people into the shop. These days you walk in and get ignored,” he said.

When the sales were on, customers would start queuing outside the doors as early as 2am. Their loyalty was rewarded with a snack and by having an article they’d come for put aside.

Even today, Mr McBean still remembers his customers, and they remember him. People regularly stop him in the street to say how they miss Bon Marche.

The old-fashioned store was a casualty of change. The demise of the Whakatu freezing works in 1986 put a big squeeze on the business, but smaller changes also had an impact. Richard Jones says when the family benefit stopped being paid directly to mothers, the result was a 25 per-cent downturn at Bon Marche.

And changes to import laws put even more pressure on small retailers.

New and powerful competitors appeared in the form of K-Mart and The Warehouse, and Bon Marche also struggled to find overseas suppliers as local manufacturers shut up shop.

Import laws are a subject Mr Jones still feels strongly about.

“We have killed one of the best industries that New Zealand had. We made some of the best blankets and apparel goods in the world and we have seen that industry destroyed.”

Is there room for Bon Marche today? Probably not, says Mr Jones, but he sees a lot of the Bon Marche values in the work of Auckland cereal manufacturer Dick Hubbard.

“I think he’s on the right track. He is orientated towards his staff, he’s interested in what his customers think. He’s one of the survivors.”

The Jones family don’t regret the years they put into the business. Richard was the only one to go into it straight from school, the others initially pursued other careers: Ross science, Stuart shepherding, and Bryce accountancy, but all found their way back to Bon Marche.

Richard Jones says “you always wonder whether another occupation might have changed you. But we all finished up in the business and we were happy to be there. It was very much a people business”.

Nostalgia for those good old days means more than 180 former staff members are descending on Napier this weekend for the centenary celebrations.

People are coming from as far away as Timaru to remember the fun that accompanied the hard work.

There was the time Mr McBean was called to help a customer who’d got the zip stuck on a pair of jeans: “There I was with a pair of pliers in my hand at the crotch of this lady, trying to find the zip – with my eyes closed.”

And the time he and two others pretended to be mannequins in the front window: “There were three ladies looking into the window so I waved – and they just about fainted.”

There are lots of other stories, Mr McBean says, but to appreciate them you had to be there.

Photo captions –

RICHARD JONES oversees the Napier store’s final sale in April 1993.

THE FIRST Bon Marche store, then known as Johnson’s Drapers, in what is now Hastings’ East Mall. The picture, taken in the early 1920s shows owner/founder and Hastings deputy mayor Matthew Johnson, centre left. His daughter Hinepuri [Hinepare] is pictured, far left.