1939–1960 From World War to DIY Revolution
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way to re-establish Basil and his wife after the privations they had experienced in the East. They made many new friends and one cannot help thinking these were some of the happiest years of their lives. So the founder’s ambition had been realised and all six sons eventually had a branch of their own, though not all at the same time.
Some of Chris Brewer’s early memories:
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In the last year of the war I first remember taking an early interest in the business. I was eight years old when my father [Kenneth] gave me a holiday job down in the basement of the Redhill branch helping to decant large drums of three colours of Valspar gloss paint into small tins which was all rationing allowed each customer at that time. I can also remember my sister coming home from school with an advertisement she had drawn in class and I being incensed that it said on it ‘Best locks come from Brewers’. With a fit of boyhood pique I exclaimed: ‘We sell paint, not locks!’ Another occasion that must have sparked my early enthusiasm was my brother’s entry for a model competition, consisting of a shop built of hardboard laid out with counters, cash desk and shelves with a roof that came off and a light inside, but it was another 12 years before I joined the business and could experience the real thing.
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The post-war decorating business Decorating materials remained rationed for some time after the war. But there were said to be 600 paint and varnish manufacturers in the UK at the end of the war ready to bring their products back to the market, though many would have been makers of industrial paints. Goodlass Wall of Liverpool were the Trade brand leaders with Combinol. There were Sissons; Bergers with Pompeian; Jenson & Nicholson with Robbialac; Hadfields with Heolin; Manders Durable Gloss; John Halls with Brolac; and the Walpamur Company with Duradio. ICI called their brand Property Paint until in 1951 they felt confident enough in their raw materials to call their paint Dulux again.