1970: The Serious Business of Shopping | Tuesday Documentary: The Retail Game | BBC Archive

Contains Graphic Imagery.

The multiples and chain stores have been growing since the beginning of the century, and in the past 15 years they have grown very fast. Today more than a third of all the money spent by shoppers in Britain goes to the multiples - Mothercare, Halfords, H. Samuels, Dorothy Perkins, Timpson Shoes, Marley Tiles, Jackson Suits, Boots, British Home Stores, C&A, Woolworths, Marks & Spencer and the like. This film tells the story of the growth of the multiples, or chain stores, and the way they play the retail game. It shows in detail what goes on behind the scenes of two well-known organisations - Tesco and WH Smith - which have become household names.

Many of the multiples have been created by strong individualists, men who have built their empires their own way. Now the personalities of the retail game are being superseded by the calculators and the computers but their methods are usually still those of the street market - buy cheap, sell cheap, put everything you've got on display, and the turnover will pay for the pilfering.

It's a thought that has made quite a few millionaires.

Clip taken from Tuesday Documentary: The Retail Game, originally broadcast on BBC One, 21 July 1970.

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