W Bill Tweeds and Cashmeres make their debut in Manchester9th October 2008
W Bill was established in 1846. Today they're best known as tweed and cashmere specialists.
The business is based in New Burlington Street and one afternoon a very nice gentleman knocked on our door, even though it was open. Straining under the weight of two rather large metal suitcases a very polite and dignified gentleman of the old school walked in and lifted the suitcases onto the large display table in the store. This looked like a superhuman ask but before I could get over there to help him he had gently got them on the table and clicked open the catches, I thought this guy is an expert and left him to it. He turned around and introduced himself “I am Mr Hammett, Ray Hammett from W Bill in London.”
Well he was like a magician hiding the contents of his suitcases and then “click, click, click” the lids opened. What greeted me inside was a cacophony of texture and colour. I was like a child opening their biggest present at Christmas. The range of tweeds and cashmeres was quite staggering. I said to Ray that we would like to take the lot and he looked at me quite perplexed. “Wouldn’t you like to look at some first” he said, which I duly dived in the suitcases as if I was trying to find the purple wrapped chocolate, hazelnut and caramel sweet in the quality street tin except they were all purple.
After I had woken up we discussed when he could get the bunches up to the store and all the normal things like timescales and cost which we covered very quickly.
Nicholas Jones Bespoke had just quadrupled it’s offering of tweed and cashmere.
One thing I still can’t understand is why Mr Hammett does not upgrade to wheelie trolleys instead of lugging those big metal boxes around. I asked him why not upgrade and he said “that was not in the budget and anyway it keeps me fit!”
Ray's not been there that long, but he's not doing badly. As a reckless young lad of 16 he joined the company in 1947. I'm sure if you work out the sums, you can assume he likes his job very much.
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