A Manchester mail order business was once mong Britain's biggest names, serving as a pre-internet Amazon-style home shopping giant.
Starting out in Manchester at the start of the 20th century, Great Universal Stores – or GUS for short – went on to become Europe's biggest mail order group. But in 2006, after 106-years, the company once synonymous with Manchester's mighty home shopping industry disappeared forever.
GUS was founded by Abraham and George Rose in 1900, beginning life as a Manchester based mail order business trading as Universal Stores. Over the next three decades, Abraham and George built the business up into a successful mail order company before it joined the London Stock Exchange in 1931.
