Manchester Celebrities
Industry, Commerce & Business Entrepreneurs
(3 of 6)

Charles Dreyfus
The Clayton Aniline Company - Ciba

The Clayton Aniline Company was set up beside the Ashton Canal in Manchester in 1876 to manufacture dyestuffs with Charles Dreyfus, a man from Alsace, as its resident chemist. Dreyfus had arrived in Manchester as a young man of 21 and, at age 28, with several friends,he founded the company. By the turn of the century the company was exporting across Europe and the United States - today the company exports 90% of its products throughout the world.
In 1911, the company began a long association with the Swiss company, Ciba. This was to be Ciba's first UK manufacturing base which has continued up to the present time.
During the 1914-1918 war, Ciba produced explosives to aid the war effort, and during the Second World War they produced additives to create the high octane aircraft fuel used in high performance planes like the Spitfire and Hurricane.
Over the years the Clayton site has expanded until today it covers 57 acres and is the largest single manufacturing base of any company in Manchester.
Later, Ciba merged with Sandoz in 1997 to form Ciba Speciality Chemicals, with six divisions world-wide, bow developing a range of chemicals-based products, including lubricants, printing inks, pharmaceuticals, plastics and colour pigments.
The factory, still based at Clayton and with laboratories in Macclesfield, has a workforce of 450, and specialises in textile dyes for natural and synthetic fibres. Its output is in excess of 350,000 metric tonnes of cloth every year. More than half of the cars in Britain have interior fabrics manufactured in Manchester.

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Charles Dreyfus

James & Henry Forsyth
Forsyth's Music Shop, Deansgate, Manchester

Both James and Henry Forsyth began careers as the family's third generation of piano makers in London at Broadwood's, where their father was manager. Their association with Manchester began in 1857 when the city hosted the Art Treasures Exhibition which attracted many visitors to the city. Here they met Charles Hallé, who had recently formed the city's major orchestra - Hallé invited the Forsyth brothers to join his company to maintain pianos for the orchestra. They set up business in the old Kendal Milne Building (now Waterstone's Bookshop, opposite the existing Kendals store in Deansgate), selling and repairing pianos, though James worked almost exclusively for the Hallé Orchestra. They also acted as agents for many musicians and performers in Manchester, and gradually developed a wide range of music-based products and services including the publication of sheet music, music books and teaching.
Later, James' son, Algernon took over the company, and continued to run the company until his death at the age of 98 in 1961.
In the 1920s they branched out, and by now their grandson had joined the staff at the Deansgate shop and introduced sales of gramophones, wirelesses and gramophone records. They also opened rehearsal and teaching studios, which were used for rehearsals for the Palace Theatre and Opera House performances of "West Side Story" and "Hair". In the 1950s the shop was moved to its present smaller premises further south down Deansgate. The 5 floor shop has extensive collections of music CDs and audio cassettes of specialist music, including classical, Japanese, New World and various other ethnic music styles and forms. They number many famous musicians among their customer base, including Phil Collins, Lisa Stansfield and Victoria Wood.
In the 1980s they diversified into the import market and have established the company as one of the UKs leading German piano importers. Today the company is thriving in Deansgate, and is a Mecca for the serious musician, as it has been for over 150 years.

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James Forsyth

Ernest Broadbelt
E Broadbelt Limited - Wholesale Flower & Fruit Merchants

Ernest Broadbelt was the Commission Agent for Manchester's Smithfield Market in 1897, and began a successful and profitable flower and fruit business in the city. Then the warehousing for Smithfield Market covered some 4 acres in Oldham Road.
The Broadbelt company dominated the fruit business in Manchester for many years, having the largest warehouses of any of their competitors, with arrangements for rapid delivery of goods by railway - their telegraphic address was "Vitesse" (French for "speed").
From the 1940s Broadbelts became the UKs biggest suppliers of cut flowers, and were sole north west importers of Fyffes Bananas, with a vast banana ripening room at the Oldham Road warehouse. On his death in 1952, ownership passed to Broadbelt's most trusted subordinate, Stanley Butters, who ran the company until his death in 1958. By the 1970s, Butter's grandsons had taken over the company.
Today the company thrives, though in a somewhat smaller capacity, as the fresh fruit industry has suffered on account of direct fruit and vegetable imports by long haul lorries from the continent and from around the UK. Broadbelt's still holds the unique sole rights to import bilberries from Poland! In 1997 the company celebrated 100 years of trading in Manchester.

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Ernest Broadbelt

Paul Hauser
P Hauser & Company - International Freight Hauliers

Paul Hauser first came to Manchester in 1945 at the end of World War II. Born in 1895, a native of Basle in Switzerland, an academic high flyer and sportsman, he had completed an international transport apprenticeship in Basle, he began work for the Danzas Company in Switzerland. During the war he had operated a convoy protected sea trade out of Liverpool, and at the end of the war decided to set up his own business in a premises in Timperley (near Altrincham, in Trafford), assisted by his wife Helen. Various moves followed - to Brazennose Street, then Princess Street, then Whitworth Street (all in city centre Manchester), and then back out to Trafford House in Stretford. The proximity of Stretford to the railway, the Manchester Ship Canal, Trafford Park, and later to the M62 Motorway, made it self evident that this was the best place to site an international hauliers business.
Hauser set up the first real rail freight link, "door to door" as he called it, and in the 1940s was able to guarantee a 10 delivery, of any size, from Manchester to anywhere in Europe. The company eventually acquired its own rail goods terminal at Ardwick East Goods Station, and soon developed a successful road transport of bulk chemicals from the nearby Shell refinery at Carrington.
In 1952 Hauser's became a Limited Company, and by now was delivering throughout Europe, Asia Minor and the Middle East, and had opened depots in London and Harwich. In 1973 a n office was opened at Stanstead Airport to deal with air freight.
Paul's son Michael took over from his father and became chairman of the Hauser Group in 1981. That year the company moved to a purpose built larger depot at Manchester International Freight Terminal, and opened an office at the Port of Dover. Success expansion saw depots and offices opened at Sheffield, Romford, Cannock and Bradford. In 1995 the company added Hauser Forwarding Limited at Trafford Park.
Today, Hauser's have a turnover in excess of £17 million and deliver about 100,000 annual consignments to 1600 customers in 43 countries worldwide - with guaranteed speed and reliability.

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Paul Hauser

Michael Marks (1959-1907)
Tom Spencer 1851-1905)
Marks & Spencer

Michael Marks was a Russian born Polish refugee who had been born in Slonim in 1859. As a young man he emigrated to England, but with no trade and unable to speak English he moved to Leeds where the Barran company was known to employ Jewish refuges. He had soon set up trading from a small handcart, peddling his goods among the surrounding villages in Yorkshire, and by 1884 prospered sufficiently to open a market stall in Leeds, Yorkshire. His slogan was "Don't Ask the Price, It's a Penny".
In 1894 he went into partnership with Tom Spencer, who was born in Skipton in Yorkshire on 7th November 1851. Spencer was a former company cashier for the Isaac Dewhurst Wholesale Company in Leeds, and paid £300 to Marks for a half-share in the business. In 1897 Marks & Spencer built a new warehouse in Manchester, which was to become the centre of their expanding business, (which now included thirty-six branches). New stores had been built in Bradford, Leicester, Northampton, Preston, and Swansea. London had seven branches including those at Brixton, Kilburn, Islington and Tottenham. By 1901 they had moved to a purpose-built premises in Derby Street, Manchester and in 1903 they became a limited company , by which time Spencer's original £300 investment had grown to be worth £15,000. Tom Spencer died on 25 July 1905 and Michael Marks died on 31 December 1907.
The company went on securing within the families of its two founders and continues today as one of the UK's top multi-million pound turnover branded stores, the St Michael label respected for its quality and the company exemplified for the high quality working conditions of its employees - held up as a model for other companies to follow.
Today there are so-called "Marks n' Sparks" or "M&S" stores in every major town and city of Britain as well as on the continent of Europe.

Michael Marks

Tom Spencer