Pryce-Jones was born in Llanllwchaearn, just outside Newtown, in 1834. He became a highly successful businessman who devised a pioneering method of reaching markets far from rural Mid Wales.
Pryce-Jones started his working life at the age of 12 as an apprentice at a local drapery business in Newtown's main thoroughfare, Broad Street. He worked there until he was 21 and, having learned the tricks of the trade, he set out on his own.
As with many successful businesses, Pryce-Jones started small with his own little shop selling drapery just off Broad Street. Newtown had always had a woollen industry and it was this local Welsh Flannel which formed the mainstay of Pryce-Jones' business.
It was the reform of the post office and the arrival of the railways in Newtown which helped turn a small rural concern into a global company.
Pryce-Jones hit upon a unique method of selling his wares. People would choose what they wanted from leaflets he sent out and the goods would then by dispatched by post and train.
It was an ideal way of meeting the needs of customers living in isolated rural locations who were either too busy or unable to get into Newtown to shop. It was also the world's first mail order business and it was to change the nature of retailing throughout the world.
The further expansion of the railways in the years that followed allowed Pryce Jones to take orders from further afield and his business grew rapidly. He built up an impressive list of customers - among them Florence Nightingale as well as Queen Victoria, the Princess of Wales and royal households across Europe. He also began selling Welsh Flannel from Newtown to far-flung America and even Australia
Several times, he had re-locate to bigger premises. In 1879, he built the Royal Welsh Warehouse, a tall redbrick building in the centre of Newtown which still stands today and which is still home to a mail order company, albeit not the original Pryce-Jones company.
By 1880, he had more than 100,000 customers and his success was acknowledged by Queen Victoria in 1887 with a knighthood, when he became Sir Pryce Pryce-Jones. He was also elected Member of Parliament for the area.
Pryce-Jones died in 1920 at the age of 85. The company he had built up over decades was hit badly by the depression of the 1920s and 1930s, being taken over by a Liverpool company in 1938.
By then, mail order had become a global phenomenon and a way of life, especially in the United States, providing a lifeline for its sparsely populated, rural communities.
Sir Pryce-Jones' connection with Robert Owen... Newtown mini site...
Newtown businessman who introduced mail order shopping to the world
