Rumbelows

Once on nearly every high street Rumbelows was said to rival the big players in the market at the time: Currys, Dixons and Comet.

Summary

Rumbelows had their origins when Fred Dawes established a chain of TV and radio rental shops that he named after himself in the 1950’s. The stores built on their success becoming a more general electrical retailer. In 1969 the Fred Dawes chain was sold to Thorn Electrical Industries who owned Radio Rentals.

Birth of the Rumbelows brand

In 1971 Thorn also acquired the Sidney Rumbelows chain. The two chains were merged under the Rumbelows brand.

Several other regional chains were bought around this time, including two chains in the North West of England, NEMS (yes of Brian Epstein fame) and Strothers.

In 1975 Thorn purchased J & F Stone from Great Universal Stores. As with Fred Dawes these new acquisitions were re-branded Rumbelows.

By 1989 Rumbelows were a major player in the electrical goods market offering both retail and rental goods.

Where Did They Go?

The demise of Rumbelows began in 1989, when the business was sold to Radio Rentals, that had itself merged with Thorn Electrical Industries the previous year.  Now Thorn EMI (as Thorn Electrical Industries had become) transferred all of Rumbelows’ rental accounts to it’s Radio Rentals chain, bolstering it’s market position.

With its core business removed, Rumbelows looked to a new business model as a more conventional electrical retailer, adding home computers (a rapidly growing market at the time) to it’s product mix.

In 1992, Thorn converted some of the remaining Rumbelows shops into some of it’s other brands such as DER, Multibroadcast or Radio Rentals.

Some stores were also converted to the Fona brand, franchised from a Danish electrical retailer and marketed as “The electrical store from Denmark”, with adverts starring Britt Ekland

By the 1990s, the business was making losses. Rumbelows had been losing £12 million yearly, and had never made a profit in its 24 years of existence.

Thorn closed the remaining 285 Rumbelows shops and 36 Fona stores in 1995.

Some stores were sold to Escom, a German PC retailer, but Escom itself folded in 1998. 

In the 1980’s, Martin Dawes (born c. 1945) carried on the family name in the electrical and electronic retailing sector, with his mobile phone business, which he went on to sell to Cellnet in March 1999 for £130 million.

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