"We had customers all over Europe."

My car was an ordinary Cortina, and on one occasion I had coats in a case on the roof. In Dusseldorf one day, I’d left some coats on the back seat as I couldn’t get them on the roof. And I’d left the window open a fraction. Somebody had come along and the coats had disappeared!
_{[John, Morlands]}

They’d go off for two or three months and get orders in colder countries – they were very smart guys all suited and booted.
_{[Tim, Morlands]}

When I first joined Morlands, I was sent to work in a shoe shop in Dusseldorf for three or four months, and I worked in the men’s shoe department selling shoes to the odd customer. That’s where I picked up my colloquial German.
_{[John, Morlands]}

In 1956 dad was offered the post of Commercial Traveller and he was given his patch – from Gloucestershire in the south to Cheshire in the north and from the Welsh coast to East Anglia. To cover this vast area he was given a Morris Minor Traveller – Reg No. 921 BPC – which Baily’s had bought a couple of years earlier for general duties like picking up packages and visitors from the railway station. So, on Monday mornings, dad would set off on his travels, the Moggie with its 800cc engine struggling over Mendip with its load of coats onboard.
_{[Geoff, Baily’s]}

And then I started going out on the road, round the hide and skin markets, buying skins. I went to the big towns and cities – Manchester, Leeds, Barnstaple, Exeter.
_{[Roger, Morlands]}

We got taken on sales trip to London – I think it was in the Café Royal. I was one of three or four girls handing out programmes – wearing leather pinafore dresses. But we never got to keep the dresses. They were quite short!
_{[Caroline T, Morlands]}

They sent me away on market research – they wanted to understand where they sat in the sheepskin coat and footwear industries in in the South West. So I went on a tour of shops and did some market research. I was only eighteen but they trusted me with a brand new car!
_{[Tim, Morlands]}

We had exhibitions in Dusseldorf, in Cologne, in Florence, Oslo. One in Amsterdam, one in Frankfurt. I went to all these exhibitions. And that meant loading up a lorry in Glastonbury, driving over, unloading the lorry, setting the stand up, manning the stand for three or four days, loading up the lorry again and driving back again. It used to take about a fortnight.
_{[John, Morlands]}