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Department store to shopping mall
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Spencer Plaza is a new landmark in the city - a modern shopping mall, the biggest, it is claimed, in the country, packed with crowds day and evening long
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BETWEEN 1897, when Spencer & Co. became a public limited company with 403 shareholders, a capital of Rs. 25 lakh and Eugene Oakshott as Chairman, and 1932, when his nephew John Oakshott Robinson died, after having served as Chairman from 1913, the story of Spencer's was one of all-India growth. It was expansion as much through its own investments as through the drive of Robinson who might be reckoned India's first `takeover king. ' Robinson had joined the firm in 1886 and saw Eugene Oakshott in full steam: establishing Spencer's cigar factories in Trichinopoly and Dindigul, taking over the Binny property and the Connemara Hotel, building that `magnificent obsession' on Mount Road, opening up branches as far away as Bombay and, most important of all, negotiating the first refreshment contract - with the South Indian Railways. That contract in 1898 came Spencer's way through Eugene Oakshott's friendship with E.W. Stoney of the SIR. That in 1902 Stoney was made a Director of Spencer's only attests to the fact that there's nothing new under the sun.
Euguene Oakshott saw Spencer's future not only in that grandest store in the East' with branches throughout the country that were mini-clones of the mother store, but also in hoteliering and catering. It was after Robinson became a Director in 1905 and Oakshott had virtually left the store for him to mind his two sons not showing the same drive, that this vision was expanded many-fold. New branches, one almost every year, and stores in the sahib's clubs in the mofussil areas were opened. Army catering contracts as far as Ambala and Meerut were won to supplement railway refreshment contracts, the waters of manufacture were tested with opening bakeries and aerated water plants and adding more cigar factories. And the takeovers began.
Pearson & Co., Secunderabad was the first acquisition Robinson negotiated. There followed takeovers of similar multipurpose stores in Bombay - Charles Phillmore & Co., Boyce & Co., H.S. Smith's and Brandon & Co - all bringing in good business and valuable property. Its only challenger in Madras, Oakes & Co, was absorbed in 1923 - and Spencer's, which opened a Motor Department in 1920, merged it with Oakes' Motor Department as a separate company. The 1925 acquisition of W.E. Smith & Co in Madras brought into the fold the second best property on Mount Road and a virtual monopoly of the pharmaceutical and aerated water business in the South. With the purchase of Jamasjee & Co., Rawalpindi, in 1926, business throughout Northwest India was assured. And when G.F. Kellner's of Calcutta was bought in 1930, Spencer's truly became an all-India firm. At a rough estimate, it had 70 branches not to mention as many Club stores; it managed over 300 railway refreshment rooms and ran the catering services of almost all the railways in the country. Besides all this, there were the hotels, starting with the Connemara, Spencer and West End in 1913, others in the South at regular intervals thereafter and, in the 1930s, and the famed Faletti's chain in the North. Faletti's Associated Hotels flagship, Maiden's in Delhi, and Cecil's and Corstophan's in Simla were to become the nucleus of the Oberoi Group, a consequence of Mohan Singh Oberoi having been one of Spencer's nominees on the board that ran the chain's seven hotels, four now in Pakistan.
What a retailing, hoteliering and catering empire it was till Independence, Robinson's efforts being built on by his successors. Then came the gradual decline of the company, the first signs seen during the stewardship of Robinson's son-in-law, S.W. Edwards, who became Chairman in 1950. He was faced with a ban on imports, an exodus of the firm's best customers, most of whom ensured occupancy in its hotels, the nationalisation of the railways with the resultant loss of railway business, and a tight money situation in a strangled marketplace. He saw Indianisation - and a different outlook that might result - as the way out. And Cooverji Hormasji Bhabha, a wealthy Bombay businessman who'd been a minister in Nehru's first cabinet, got the nod over Anantharamakrishnan of Amalgamations, mainly because of Zal Rustom Irani who had joined the company in 1937 as its first senior Indian executive. Irani became a Director in 1943 - and his were words that mattered with Edwards.
When Irani, in 1957, became the first Indian to chair Spencer's, he saw industrialisation as the way out for the struggling company. Converting its enormous wealth of real estate around the country into liquidity, he invested in pharmaceutical and consumer durables manufacture, paying less attention to the firm's reputation for retailing. When neither industry took off, the slide continued, the only bright spot being the agreement to lease the Connemara, West End and Savoy to the Taj Group in the 1970s.
As though there wasn't enough gloom in these trying times, fire only made the scene darker. A blaze one night in 1981 destroyed the interior of the main showroom - and the Spencer's story was to all intents and purposes over. Discussions with conservation architects might have saved the building, but it was decided not to do anything till the future of the firm was clear. Meanwhile, retailing moved to the Annexe, built c.1925 in a style totally out of step with the main building and the only part of the complex still surviving as these lines are written.
The Bhabha interests, unable to make a go of it, sold the Company in 1989 to the R.P. Goenka Group of Calcutta. And the RPG Group has been leading a retailing revolution in the South ever since, with chains like Food World, Health & Glow and Music World, but does not see Spencer's as the name to flaunt. The Company as an institution remains - and so do a few stores. In fact, the main store in Madras has a liquor counter no second to the one in Spencer's heyday. But no Spencer's store today, is what it was; the ambience has gone, together with the building.
Demolition of Spencer's heritage building began in 1988 and Mangal Tirth began developing Phase-I of Spencer Plaza. The new building opened for occupation in 1991. And two more phases have since been completed. When the Annexe is pulled down and the petrol shed moved, the fourth and last phase will begin. Together, the four phases make Spencer Plaza a new landmark in the city - a modern shopping mall, the biggest, it is claimed, in the country, packed with crowds day and evening long. Ironically, the site has been transformed from successful British Colonial to as successful American Consumerist, with the in-between Indian retail store attempt only a bad memory.
S. MUTHIAH
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