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In 1969 when Mr Frank Caswell sold his Rushden shop to Messrs Calland and Holtom who had an established business at Coventry. Two years later they made extensive alterations to the premises and they continued to trade under the Caswell name (established in Rushden in 1930 and well known in the wider locality) for about ten years.
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Mr Frank Caswell had trained as an upholsterer and decided to open a small shop in Rushden and also to trade in furniture.
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1932 Advert in the Rushden Echo & Argus
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One of his shop windows won second prize in a window dressing competition held during Shopping Week 1949.
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Rushden Hall is the background artwork for a display of perambulators.
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In 1953 he took on an assistant, Mr Alan Benning, as furniture salesman and later Alan trained as a carpet fitter.
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A 1953 invoice for a Silver Cross pram
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Frank and his wife (who came from Kettering) had also established a shop in Kettering and she wanted to return there to live. In 1969 Frank sold the business to Tom Calland and Alf Holtom, on condition that Alan was made a director. With the continuity that Alan was still there to advise their regular customers, the business thrived.
In 1997 sadly Mr Calland died, and his son Paul, who had been working in the business for some time, took over his father's place in the business.
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The 1971 new shop front
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The carpet department
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Miss Osborne in a room setting
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Evening Telegraph, 29th September 1971
Caswells Cater For All Tastes
Enlarged Showroom Opens on Friday
CASWELLS, while they have always handled the higher quality furniture, have also paid great attention to changing tastes.
They recognised that some of the traditional styles would never disappear. They also knew that there is an increasing number of people who want something more sophisticated in furniture design. This has applied both to local people and to many of their potential customers who have moved to the area from London.
Side by side, Caswells have the traditional, the simulated period furniture and the modern (and even the very modern). Supplementing the English furniture, they have a considerable range from Scandinavia who have a flair for modern lines in furniture.
In addition to satisfying the needs of the local shopper (and "local" is anyone in the county) Caswells are meeting the tastes of the newcomer to the area who may have slightly different ideas on furniture design. They are also meeting the needs of those who have always been accustomed to buying in a very large showroom.
With the completion of extensions at Caswells, the Rushden furnishers, the town now has one of the largest furniture showrooms in the county. If you cannot visualise 8,000 square feet of display area, think of a shop into whose ground floor alone you could fit between 50 and 60 average house rooms. It is over 40 years ago that the name "Caswell" first appeared above a modest furniture shop in Wellingborough Road, Rushden. Since then a number of alterations and extensions have been made. But all of them have been dwarfed by the alterations just completed.
By taking over the house next door and converting it into showroom space, it has been possible to add 4,000 sq. feet to the display area. Moving the storage department upstairs, there are now 8,000 sq. feet available for display, all on the ground floor.
Perhaps figures leave you puzzled. The best thing is to go to the shop and have a look – note how many suites are on show, how many room displays, how many departments there are, how many carpets on show and you realise that this is a very big shop by any standards.
Where The Emphasis Is On Service
The more you learn about Caswells, the more impressed you are by the emphasis they put on advice and service.
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Take carpets. They will advise you on the type of carpet that will wear best in a given area. They will measure the amount of carpet you want and give you an estimate and their own expert will lay it for you.
Take fitted furniture which started in the kitchen, spread to the bedroom and is now being used more and more in living areas. Caswells have a department. They will advise you on this too. They will inspect the room, prepare plans and will show you how furniture can be fitted in to the best effect and how much it will cost.
These Are The Staff
A showroom, no matter how big, is only as good as its stock. It is also true that it is only as good as its staff. We have given some indication of the range of stock. The staff is headed by people who have spent a long time in the firm and who know a lot about furniture. In addition to Mr. Benning, the sales director, there is Mrs. M. May, who has been with the firm for 16 years, and Miss Osborne, who has been at Caswells for nine years.
Curtains
Take curtains. You make your choice of material and pattern from Caswells extensive stock and they can call on the services of an expert to make them up for you. All this is on top of the normal advice and help you expect (and get at Caswells) when you go to buy a houseful of furniture, a suite or a single item. In an age when service is disappearing from so many aspects of the retail trade it is heartening to find that here it is very much to the fore.
Storage
That is display area, the area you can walk around and inspect the suites, the carpets and the curtains, the rugs and the occasional items. The storage space is equally important and this too has been extended. It means that the shop can keep a considerable reserve stock and has room to store furniture for customers until they are ready to take delivery.
Caswells have two subsidiary companies operating outside this area. But by purchasing for all three, Caswells can cut costs and keep prices highly competitive.
Running the enlarged store is Mr. Alan Benning, who has spent 8 years with Caswells and was promoted executive sales director two years ago.
He has charge of stock that included the products of every major manufacturer in this country – furniture, carpets and bedding.
A single generation has seen some big changes in carpets. It has seen the introduction of new materials, such as nylon pile. It has seen a change to gay patterns to contrast with sombre hues of grandma’s Wilton or Axminster. It has seen carpet squares (which was all most of us ever thought about when the carpets was mentioned) almost ousted by fitted carpets. In bedrooms, for example, 90 per cent is fitted these days.
If you are to have a considerable area covered with one pattern of carpet, you want to know what it will look like – sometimes a difficult thing to visualise if you are looking at a foot square pattern.
Caswells carpets department has on display many, many rolls of carpet so that you can see just what a big area will look like. In fact a good deal of the extra space the extensions have provided has been used to offer room to show a wide range of carpets to best advantage. (Back to figures – there is 2,000 sq. feet of carpet display area).
There is another thing that has happened in the carpet world in the last decade or so – it has spread from the parlour to every part of the house. Once a carpet square in the “front room” and a carpet on the stairs and in the hall was the lot. Then the modern householder had carpet fitted all over the lounge, dining room and hall.
More recently carpet has been fitted in the bathroom (50 per cent of new homes, it is estimated, have this latest luxury). Now carpets are being fitted in kitchens too. Before you conjure up visions of soggy bits of Wilton or suds saturated Axminster, it should be clear that in bathrooms and kitchen you fit nylon pile, foam rubber backed carpet which is water repellent. Caswells have a good stock of it – it is worth investigating.
Beds By The Dozen Always On Show
The extra space they have has allowed Caswells to give more elbow room to a number of departments—curtains, carpets and bedding, for instance.
Take bedding in particular. There are over 60 different types of bed on show by all the best manufacturers. And you don't have to guess their merits as they lean up against a wall—they are all set out just as they would be in your bedroom. You can try them out too.
You will find areas of the shop devoted to lounge furniture, dining room suites, kitchen furniture and all those occasional items that make up a home. There are standard and table lamps, tea trolleys, pictures, stools, room dividers, corner cupboards, stools and much besides.
One could go on about this showroom and all its departments and services and forget to mention that it is open all through the lunchtime and that there is convenient parking facility right opposite the shop.
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