This year, we are celebrating our 100th Birthday and I would like to take the opportunity to thank you all for the loyal support which has made reaching this landmark possible. Reflecting over our past success, it is interesting to think about our history and how it all began.
The company was founded by my grandfather Frank who was an army Corporal before being drafted into the British Expeditionary Forces at the start of World War 1. He saw a bit too much of the action before losing his leg in 1917 and was de-mobilised back to his hometown of London. There were no jobs to be had so, like any enterprising young man in his position, he hopped on the train and got off at the end of the line which was Lowestoft. Here, he found a job as an apprentice electrical engineer and, upon qualifying in 1921, he set up his own company selling and servicing radios – Hughes was born!
Frank’s first business card proudly displays this date and also shows how important service was to us from the very beginning with the family home being renamed to “Service House”. The telephone number was only 278, a far cry from today’s 11-digit mobile number, and there was no need for a town or country code as people only shopped local.
This picture shows Frank (in the middle) taking a delivery of radios at the time of the Second World War. Who would have known they were so big? He died shortly after this picture was taken and the business was taken on by his children Peter, Phyllis and my father Jim. As demand for home electrical products boomed in those post-war years, they were able to expand the business beyond its Lowestoft roots.
This advert from the 1950’s shows that we had expanded into televisions, had an extra shop in nearby Beccles and an extra digit to our phone number! What hasn’t changed to this day is the focus on service!
The years that followed were kind to electrical retailers and, by the 1990’s, we were one of 22 specialist electrical retail chains in the country. However, the new millennium brought more difficulties for retailers as first supermarkets, and then the internet, took much of the business while shop rent and rates rose substantially. The result is that there are now only three specialist electrical retail chains left in the country, with Hughes proudly being one of them.
Reflecting back, the Hughes of today is very different to the one that began 100 years ago! We have equal amounts of income from our shops, the Hughes.co.uk website, our 100,000 Hughes Rental customers and our Hughes Trade business to business operation. This diversity has made us resilient to problems such as recessions, Brexit disruptions, and now the pandemic. However, two very important things remain the same – our focus on service and our family ownership. We genuinely try to put people first, whether they are customers, colleagues or suppliers, though perhaps not competitors! We also try to display family values in how we deal with these people as their loyalty is what has helped us reach this landmark.
In 2011, we were able to celebrate our 90th Birthday in style. We retuned 10,000 televisions in one week as part of the UK digital switchover, we bought our closest rival Bennetts who had shops throughout East Anglia, we won the contract to supply all the appliances for the London 2012 Olympic Games and received the Eastern Daily Press ‘Business of the Year’ Award. At the end of that busy year, we were able to enjoy a great party for 1000 colleagues and partners at the Searles Leisure Resort in Hunstanton.
Sadly, Covid means that we have had to defer our 100th Birthday Party until next year but we will be touring through our shop locations in a delivery van similar to our original vehicles with some of our old equipment to show how technology has progressed over the years and celebrate at a smaller, local scale. We hope to see you all at one of these events soon.
I would like to say a massive thank you to all of our customers for making this first 100 years possible and I hope that you will be part of the next 100 years of Hughes!
Kind regards,
Robert Hughes
Chair of Hughes
