Wisdens Closure: The Departure of a Sporting Family
HUGH SULLIVAN
In 1896, W G Grace was opening the batting for England against Australia at the age of 48; The Wednesday club (later re-branded as Sheffield Wednesday) beat Wolves 2-1 at Crystal Palace to win the FA Cup; Persimmon was a 5/1 winner of the Epsom Derby. In the same year a budding entrepreneur with a legendary sporting name, Arthur Wisden, opened an engravers business in Trinity Street, Hastings.
It’s fair to assume that Arthur was inspired by his family relative John Wisden, celebrated Sussex cricketer (known as ‘ The Little Wonder’) and founder of Wisdens Cricket Almanac, in adapting the business to retailing sports goods from 1908. And that cricket bats, balls and other accessories joined the traditional stock of an Edwardian sports outfitter – guns, fishing tackle and camping gear – from then on. In any event the store kept pace with social, technological and sporting changes over the following century and a quarter under the direction of four successive generations of Wisdens.
Ownership passed from Arthur to son Alan – a survivor of the Somme battlefield in 1916 and later footballer for Brighton– to grandson Vic and eventually on to great-grandson Mark, who started as a ‘Saturday boy’ in 1977 at the age of 12 and has worked there full-time from the age of 16 until now. Co-owner with him, Ian Gill, has worked alongside for more than 40 years. But although Mark has five children and Ian two – all seven of whom have done stints of work at the family shop as they respectively grew up – none will inherit. In a few weeks’ time, probably before the end of February, the shop and business will be no more.
Like so much else in retail, Wisdens has survived changes in technology, in fashion, in demographics, expanding the range of sports which it services and the stock of clothes, accessories and equipment it offers. Mark says that its overall product range encompasses upwards of 20,000 SKUs (stock keeping units, each having its bar code distinguishing product type, brand, colour and size). And over the last 20 years the shop has embraced the online market – first selling clearance items on e-bay, but from around 2010 accepting the embrace of Amazon to offer all its stock through the commercial giant’s digital reach.
By 2017, 80% of Wisdens’ custom was sold through Amazon, with the three upper floors of the ramshackle street-corner premises given over to parcel and dispatch. Then the Covid lockdown experience, accustoming not just younger generations but householders of all ages to do their shopping online, pushed the Amazon sales proportion up to 90% at increasingly tight profit margins. The personal knowledge and experience still offered in person by Mark, Ian and their staff to local customers visiting the store and trying out their products at first hand cannot be replicated digitally – and will be hugely mourned when it’s gone. But Mark has seen the writing on the wall for a long time and recognised that he was likely to be the last Wisden in Trinity Street, 130 years after the first arrived. The moment of departure is almost upon him.
“We’ve changed a lot since I first started”, he says. “But, still, the best moment of the day is our customer going out of the door with the right pair of shoes, and knowing they’ll come back in due course for the next one. That’s what I’ll miss.”
Wisdens will stay open for the next 3-5 weeks offering 30% or more reductions on all its remaining stock. Loyal customers and bargain hunters alike should pay their last respects in person while they can.
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