An early lead lost

In 1926 Simon Marks, head of a little-known chain of penny bazaars called Marks & Spencer, placed an order for men’s socks with Corahs, a Leicester knitwear manufacturer. The order was kept secret – the Corah brothers did not want to offend the wholesalers, who forbade their suppliers from selling direct to retailers – but it proved to be the start of a beautiful friendship.

The cost to Marks & Spencer was 8s 6d for a dozen pairs of socks, a shilling less than a wholesaler would have charged. But Simon Marks was not just interested in lower prices. He wanted to distinguish M&S from Woolworths by upgrading quality and giving consumers real value for money. Hence he entered into a dialogue with Corahs on how the shilling saved could be spent on producing a better garment.

This was a boom time for ready-made clothing, helped along by the emancipation of women. Thanks to the new man-made fibres from Courtaulds, light underwear replaced the heavy woollen ‘unmentionables’ which women had worn at the start of the century, and shorter skirts created a huge demand for rayon stockings. For historical reasons production of hosiery, underwear and knitted outerwear such as cardigans and jumpers was concentrated mainly in the East Midlands, with a smaller enclave in the Scottish Borders, and this part of the textile industry expanded strongly in the inter-war years, while Lancashire cotton and Yorkshire wool were in steep decline.

Simon Marks’s genius was to find a way of satisfying the growing market by offering good-quality clothing at affordable prices, and he did so by forging an extraordinarily productive and durable partnership with the hosiery and knitwear trade. This involved not just large orders but close co-operation on design and production methods.