Benjamin Hyam

Second-hand clothes were not good enough for the middle classes and bespoke tailoring was expensive. Around 1830, in Manchester retail middlemen started to deal with customers and put out the work on a low-profit-margin system to outworkers in sweatshops. One of the most prominent of the retail middlemen was Benjamin Hyam, who created modern mass market tailoring, where profit came from sales volume, not high prices. He claimed to make a complete suit within six hours for a fixed price in workshops attached to his shop. He advertised suits in the Manchester Guardian with a money-back guarantee.[12] His workforce was probably over 100. Hyam was ultra-orthodox and his shop closed at sunset on Friday. His influence was great, so that by 1836 seven of the synagogue seat holders had followed his example and traded as tailors. The conditions they imposed on their workers provoked a series of unsuccessful strikes in 1833 and 1834. Ready-made clothing was the inevitable consequence of such a production system, and Hyam was advertising this in 1836.