Eighty Druitt Street is a prominently located, heritage building in the Town Hall precinct of Sydney’s CBD. It’s colourful history owes its origins to an 1888 competition conducted by the Excelsior Land Investment and Building Company (and Bank Ltd) to design a hotel and banking premises on the corner of Druitt and York Streets (opposite the QVB – Queen Victoria Building). The contest was won by architect Ambrose Thornley and the completed commercial construction (circa 1890) adopted the name suggested by Thornley, “Central Hotel”.
(at left Central Hotel, circa 1900 – dwarfed by the massive QVB building)
Along the York Street frontage of the building was a separate “banking chamber”. In 1896 this became a branch of the City Bank of Sydney. The CBS banking company folded in 1918 and its branches were taken over by the Australian Bank of Commerce. By 1931 the ABS including York Street branch was absorbed into the Bank of NSW.
Meanwhile, the Central Hotel was bought in 1904 by a “Mr Roberts” who had apparently previous done a sterling job of value-adding and enhancing the nearby Criterion Family Hotel (The Newsletter (Sydney), 17-Dec-1904)✱. During the first decade of the 20th century the hotel was renamed the Gresham Hotel. In 1925 the hotel was bought by leading brewery Tooth and Co (‘Gresham Hotel: Sold for £47,000’, The Sun (Sydney), 20-Nov-1925).
In the 1980s the Gresham was converted into offices and in 1995 the building was purchased by the Government of Hong Kong. It has operated as the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Sydney, representing China’s Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong. The building is also used to promote Hong Kong tourism under the aegis of the HK Tourism Board.
(Photo credit: www.hktosydney.gov.hk)
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✱ located on the corner of Pitt and Park Streets, the hotel was part of the Criterion Theatre complex. The Sydney newspaper report of this reads like a glowing advertisement for the mysterious “Mr Roberts’” business
Gowings menswear store was an retail institution in Sydney’s CBD for six score and then some years. This mid city store was the place you could find—in addition to its main line of affordable casual men’s clothing and apparel—among other things outdoor camping equipment, cricket kits, school uniforms and novelty items. Gowings also had a barber’s shop and you could hire a Year 12 formal suit or a wedding tux.
The Gowings story starts with John Ellis Symonds (JES) Gowings who emigrated to New South Wales from England in 1857. After retail experience in David Jones’ Sydney department store—where he worked his way up to head of mercery—JES’s first venture of his own was to open a drapery shop in 1863 in Crown Street, East Sydney. He then formed a partnership with his brother Preston, in 1868 the brothers opened a Mercery and Glove Depot at 318 George Street. JES managed the store in return for £200 per annum and 50% of the profits. The iconic Sydney retailer was up and running.
The business grew, in 1870 a new mercery warehouse was opened in Edinburgh House, 344 George Street, and 20 years later a second city store at 498 George Street. The brothers’ younger sibling Charles was hired as the Gowings store’s “dog walloper”, his job was chasing dogs away from the store as a preventive measure so they didn’t foul the pavement (Kingston).
Over time the Gowings retailer evolved from specialising in ladies’ gloves and silk umbrellas to menswear, turning itself into high-class gentlemen’s outfitters. JES’ customer-centric retail philosophy involved listening to the customers, treating them like they were friends and securing the best quality goods for them (Kingston). The 1890s and the approach of Federation prompted Gowings, anticipating the modern “Buy Australian” campaign, to push the Australian product. Restyling themselves as “Austral Clothiers, Mercer’s, Hatters”, Gowings Bros launched the slogan “Australian wool for Australian people”. For the country customers Gowings offered Australian manufactured commodities via its mail order service, eg, Marrickville Tweeds from John Vicars & Co, ‘bosker’ rugs made especially for Gowings (Kingston).
After JES’ death in 1908 control of Gowings passed to the John and Preston’s sons, with the firm’s tradition for quality goods continuing. The construction of a new flagship building in 1929 on the George Street site became a landmark for Sydney (at the time it was Sydney’s highest building and the first steel construction in the CBD)✦.
A testimony to Gowings’ fame is the cult phrase that it acquired (and cultivated by the retailer) during the 20th century …”Gone to Gowings” has passed into the Australian vernacular, meaning a failure of some kind or other, or possibly a state of inebriation or dementia (Tréguer). Macquarie Dictionary lists six definitions: 1. Deteriorating financially, 2. illness especially a hangover, 3. Failing dismally (a racehorse, a football team, etc), 4. having departed hastily or without a specific destination in mind, 5. drunk, 6. Insane, idiotic. Alternately it could mean down on your luck, lost at the races, etc. The other famous catchphrase that was posted on the flagship premises” facade was “Walk Thru, No one Asked to Buy”.
The Gowings family maintained a steady as it goes, minimise risk approach to the retail business for most of its history. Attempts to modernise it’s main store came later (installing air conditioning and music in lifts, the first retailer in Sydney to do so). Another innovation was its introduction of the “Gowings Own Brand” label of merchandise.
Gowings’ CBD stores (it added a second city store at Wynyard in 1996 – nicknamed the “Blokeatorium”) retained their popularity with the public, however a move to the suburbs (Oxford Street, Darlinghurst and Hornsby) proved less successful. In 2000 the Gowings family relinquished control of the retail business to an independent listed company G Retail and concentrated on the property development game.
Gowings ad, 1909
Gowings end-game
Under G Retail a new suburban outlet at Parramatta opened in 2002 proved a disaster, and when G Retail lost money three years in a row, the writing was on the board for the veteran retailer. More financial strife followed overreach (an aggressive expansion and building renovation program), G Retail was heavily in debt and headed for administration. In the early 2000s, Gowings, like most small retailers, struggled. A hike in the petrol price in Sydney in 2005 depressed consumer spending, exacerbating its problems (Evans; Perinotto). In recent years Gowings tried to innovate, going online, discounting, etc, but the decline was irreversible by then. Competition from the city’s retail giants was too great, Gowings simply couldn’t match the depth and breadth of range and quality that big merchants such as Target could offer (Lake)◈. The Oxford Street and Hornsby stores closed in 2005 and the following January the flagship George Street store closed its doors for good after 137 years of retailing. Later that year the Wynyard store completed the round of closures.
Compared to the larger, more dynamic players in the market, Gowings had the reputation of being a “blokey store”, leading some observers to pinpoint its ultimate demise in its retail conservatism, “stay(ing) locked in the fifties or sixties and limited (in its) geography” (Lake)
The post-Gowings space
Three months after its closure the Gowings landmark building at 452 George Street was snapped up by the Rydge family’s Amalgamated Holdings goliath for $68.6 million, consolidating its property holdings in this mid-town spot — Amalgamated Holdings had previously acquired the State Theatre building next door (49-51 Market St) as well as the nearby Mick Simmons building.
Footnote: in the late Nineties Gowings wholeheartedly embraced the ‘blokey’ image, its then MD and descendent of the founder proclaimed Gowings “the complete bloke’s outfitters”. Along with its usual clothing lines, it began pitching the “Bear Grylls” experience to men, selling goods for the great outdoor adventure (camping gear, hunting knives, zippo lighters) (Owens).Gowings bldg (2021)
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✦ designed by architect Crawford H Mackellar and incorporating a Palazzo style
◈ Retail expert Rob Lake attributes the fact that Gowings survived longer than many of the other ‘dinosaurs’ to its evolution into a sort of quaint relic which became its “point of difference” but one that didn’t boost it’s sales (Lake)
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Works and articles consulted:
Beverley Kingston, ‘Gowing, John Ellis Symonds (1835–1908)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/gowing-john-ellis-symonds-12945/text23395, published first in hardcopy 2005, accessed online 26 April 2021.
‘”gone to Gowings”: meaning and origin of this Australian phrase’, (Pascal Tréguer), Word Histories, 2020, www.wordhistories.net
‘End of an era as Gowings finally gone’, Sydney Morning Herald, 28-Jan-2006, www.smh.com.au
‘Gowings makes it like a man’s, (Susan Owens), Australian Financial Review, 25-Sep-1999, www.afr.com
‘The sad demise of a quirky retail dinosaur’, (Rob Lake), Crikey, 08-Nov-2005, www.crikey.com.au
‘Gowings clearing out for good after 137 years’, (Michael Evans), Sydney Morning Herald, 17-Dec-2005, www.smh.com.au
‘Gowings building sold to neighbour for $69m’, (Tina Perinotto), Australian Financial Review, 28-Apr-2006, www.afr.com
For as long as most consumers in the West can remember, it’s been Coca-Cola versus Pepsi-Cola, vying for the public’s preferred carbonated soft drink. Just how long is that? Well, the Pepsi-Cola Company was established in 1902, ten years after Coca-Cola did, so the rivalry got going pretty much early on in the 20th century. It was a long gestation period however for Pepsi before it got close to being competitive with Coca-Cola✱. PepsiCo struggled so much in the early years that in 1923 the company was even declared bankrupt – basically due to WWI sugar rationing in the US. Eight years later it filed for bankruptcy again! Pepsi never actually went away though, slowly and methodically rebuilding itself as a significant player in the industry, albeit for a long time it remained as one observer put it, a “persistent gadfly” in a lake dominated by Coca-Cola (Kahn).
In its early days Coke was marketed both as a medicinal drink and as a “refreshing tonic”
While Coca-Cola powered on with innovatively marketing (using high profile sportsmen) its product to kids with Santa Claus’ help, and expanding Coke overseas, Pepsi didn’t really get its act together until the middle of the 20th Century. PepsiCo shifted its branding and marketing (moving from bottles to cans and adopting patriotic red, white and blue colours for the product). Another direction Pepsi goes in at this time is product diversification … the company’s 1965 merger with Frito-Lay Inc marks Pepsi’s foray into the snack food field. It also acquired other soft drink brands like Mountain Dew in 1964. Coca-Cola on the other hand confined itself to the beverage field with the introduction of TaB (a sugar-free diet version of Coke), then Sprite and Fresca.
Pepsi’s watershed year was 1975 when it mounted the “Pepsi Challenge”, a series of filmed blind-taste tests in which the majority of participants chose Pepsi over Coke as their preferred soda. This boosted Pepsi sales and escalated the rivalry between the two “Big Sodas”, kicking off what became known in America from the Sixties on as the “Cola Wars” or the “Soda Wars”. Until the Pepsi Challenge happened Coca-Cola had been coasting somewhat, complacently presenting itself as “the real thing” in contrast to the upstart pretender. Coca-Cola’s response to PepsiCo’s move was to promote the then most popular personality on US TV Bill Cosby as “the face of Coke”.
Pepsi embarked on a marketing campaign which depicted itself as a younger, hipper brand than its outmoded rival. Drinking Pepsi was a cool thing to do (so proclaimed the marketers), when stacked up against the tired, same old, same old Coke alternative. Integral to PepsiCo’s campaign was the recruitment of celebrities to endorse the beverage, the centrepiece of which was Michael Jackson. Other pop music icons followed the success of Jackson’s involvement with the product – David Bowie, Madonna, Lionel Ritchie, etc. Ad men heralded Pepsi as “the choice of a new generation”.
In the early Eighties, under pressure from Pepsi’s inroads into the market, Coca-Cola introduced diet Coke, a caffeine-free soda, followed by a complete redesign of Coke—given the secret codename “Project Kansas”—the outcome in 1985 was a sweeter Coke, New Coke. To counter Pepsi’s sweeter, more syrupy taste, Coca-Cola replaced sugar with corn syrup (which also reduced the production cost). New Coke however proved a disaster for the company, provoking a huge backlash from loyal consumers, some described the new taste as like “two day old Pepsi”. Southern fans of Coke, where Coca-Cola (and Pepsi) had its origins, were especially offended.
Faced with an avalanche of criticism, Coca-Cola brought back the old formula under the name “Coca-Cola Classic”. New Coke for its part got rebranded but never really took off and was eventually discontinued. Disappointment that it was, New Coke did provide one unanticipated positive – it managed to reawaken in many Coca-Cola drinkers suffering from a bout of ennui a new craving for the original taste (Little).
The feud between Pepsi and Coke has continued to the present, in contemporary times reaching social media and outer space. In 2011 the hardball rivalry saw PepsiCo target Coke’s famous, family-friendly mascots, the polar bears and even every child’s favourite stranger Santa.
Vintage 1950s ad: “Pepsi-Chic” before it went “Pepsi-Hip” (Robt Levering)
The battle between the brown carbonated sugar beverages has seen Pepsi and Coca-Cola go tit-for-tat. Coke had the contour bottle so Pepsi introduced the swirl bottle, Pepsi had Gatorade so Coke had Powerade, Coke had Fanta so Pepsi had Tropicana, and so on. Only the decision by Pepsi to branch into non-beverage fields has not seen Coca-Cola follow suit. Some industry observers attribute Pepsi’s declining market position commensurate to Coke (2008–2018: Pepsi’s market share fell from 10.3 to 8.4 per cent, while Coca-Cola’s rose from 17.3 to 17.8 per cent) to it’s preoccupation with diversification leading to the company losing its focus on its flagship product (Weiner-Bronner; Beverage Digest).
World domination through the prism of “Coca-colonisation”
Both Coke and Pepsi are deeply embedded in American culture and psyche as national icons. Coca-Cola’s brand recognition goes beyond this, embodying a universality that is global in reach. Mid-century Coca-Cola officials gleefully crowed that the drink is the “most American thing in America”. Robert W Woodruff, Coca-Cola president for over three decades, declared it to be “the essence of capitalism”. World War II enabled Coca-Cola to spread the word via US servicemen by cleverly promising (and delivering) them the sugary product in overseas theatres of war. The seemingly unstoppable postwar expansion of Coke as the company sought to extend its market to all corners of the world met with some international pushback. Certain European states like France (spurred on by agitation by the French Communist Party) staunchly resisted the drink’s introduction to their domestic markets, an attempt as they saw it to “Coca-colonise” other sovereign nations. In such countries the arrival of Coca-Cola bottles on their city shop shelves was seen as a pervasive evil, a symbol of American cultural imperialism, an all-consuming Americanisation which undermines the way of life and values of their society⍟.
Footnote: the Big Sodas rivalry had ad companies of second-half 20th century working overtime to come up with the jingle or tagline that would give their client the edge … from Coca-Cola’s early go-to “The pause that refreshes” to the TV age’s standards “Things Go Better with Coke” and “It’s the Real Thing” (the words “real” and “real thing” recur over the decades in Coca-Cola’s ad campaigns). Pepsi for its part, went from “more bounce to the ounce” in 1950 to its 1960s accent on youth, “Come Alive! You’re in the Pepsi Generation” and numerous variations over the years on this theme (“young” and “generation” are the key Pepsi words that recur through the jingles and slogans).
Photo: George Marks/Retrofile/Getty
Postscript: The taste difference!
Most people know that Coca-Cola originally used small amounts of cocaine in the famous beverage (scandalous as that may seem to modern sensibilities), but what is it that makes the two brown-coloured soft drinks taste a bit different? They both have carbonated water, sugar, colour Caramel E150d, phosphoric acid and natural flavourings. Well, according to Malcolm Gladwell (Blink, 2005), its the hints of citrus acid that is added to Pepsi that sets the drinks apart – cf. Coke’s citrus-free, sweet vanilla and raisin flavours.
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✱ Pepsi was always coming from behind in the formative period, by the time PepsiCo was founded the Big Coke was already selling about one million gallons a year
⍟ the familiar bottle of Coke is boundless as well as ubiquitous, having been carried under the North Pole and into outer space
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Articles and sites consulted:
‘Why Coke is winning the cola wars’, (Danielle Wiener-Bronner), CNN Business, 21-Feb-2018, www. money.cnn.com
‘COKE VS. PEPSI: The Amazing Story Between the Cola Wars’, (Kim Bhasin), Business Insider, 02-Nov-2011, www.businessinsider.com
‘Ever Wondered What’s The Difference Between Coca-Cola and Pepsi? It’s Literally ONE Ingredient’, (Bobbie Edsor), Delish, 03-Dec-3020, www.delish.com
‘The Universal Drink’, (E.J.Kahn Jr), The New Yorker, 06-Feb-1959, www.newyorker.com
‘The Cola Wars’, (Melissa Santore), Ranker.com, 20-Feb-2020, www.ranker.com
During the Cold War not many people outside of the USSR knew of the Russian penchant for it’s ideological rival’s second most popular cola drink. The Soviet Union’s love affair with Pepsi-Cola started with a meeting between Premier Khrushchev and US Vice-President Nixon in 1959. As part of what was a rare cultural exchange for the time, Khrushchev was introduced to the sugary, carbonated beverage, the taste apparently meeting with the Soviet premier’s approval.
⏏️ Pepsi’s role in the Nixon-Khrushchev Kitchen Debate
So began a novel bilateral trade. With Russian rubles not valued outside of the USSR, a barter system was forged. The Russian and other Soviet people got to drink Pepsi, in return vodka (in the form of the state-owned brand Stolichnaya) was made available in the US market.
Things went smoothly enough until 1980…the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan threatened the Pepsi deal. Americans boycotted Soviet goods including Stolichnaya…the popular vodka’s sales plummeted in the US. In the late 1980s the Pepsi company—mindful that seven billion Russians were drinking Pepsi each year—hit upon a new and more unorthodox US/Soviet exchange deal.
To keep the Pepsi flowing to Russian consumers, Pepsi accepted a flotilla of ageing Soviet warships in lieu. Taking possession of 17 rusty Soviet warships plus a few other auxiliary naval vessels. The fleet was far from being in A1 shipshape condition, but it enabled the soft drink giant to boast that it possessed the world 6th most powerful navy at the time – on paper if not on water!
(Source: www.naval-encylopedia.com)
Pepsi’s move earned the displeasure of the US military but the company CEO’s slightly disingenuous rejoinder to the Pentagon was that it was dismantling the Soviet fleet faster than they were!*
Pepsi didn’t hang on to the decidedly decrepit Russian fleet for long, selling the warships to a Swedish scrap-recycling business in the early 1990s. A few years later Coca-Cola usurped it’s place in the Russian market.
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* undoubtedly Pepsi’s billion-dollar stake in the USSR remained it’s primary motive
Sites/works consulted: 👁🗨👁🗨👁🗨
’When the Soviet Union Paid Pepsi in Warships’, (Anne Ewbank), Atlas Obscura, 12-Jan-2018, www.atlasobscura.com)
‘ How Pepsi became the 6th largest military in the world‘, (Tom Kirkpatrick, We Are The Mighty, 28-Jan-2019, www.wearethemighty.com
‘Pepsi Navy: When the Soviets Traded Warships for Soft Drinks’, Sandboxx, 06-Nov-2020, www.sandboxx.com
Eighty Druitt Street is a prominently located, heritage building in the Town Hall precinct of Sydney’s CBD. It’s colourful history owes its origins to an 1888 competition conducted by the Excelsior Land Investment and Building Company (and Bank Ltd) to design a hotel and banking premises on the corner of Druitt and York Streets (opposite the QVB – Queen Victoria Building). The contest was won by architect Ambrose Thornley and the completed commercial construction (circa 1890) adopted the name suggested by Thornley, “Central Hotel”.
(at left Central Hotel, circa 1900 – dwarfed by the massive QVB building)
Meanwhile, the Central Hotel was bought in 1904 by a “Mr Roberts” who had apparently previous done a sterling job of value-adding and enhancing the nearby Criterion Family Hotel (The Newsletter (Sydney), 17-Dec-1904)✱. During the first decade of the 20th century the hotel was renamed the Gresham Hotel. In 1925 the hotel was bought by leading brewery Tooth and Co (‘Gresham Hotel: Sold for £47,000’, The Sun (Sydney), 20-Nov-1925).
In the 1980s the Gresham was converted into offices and in 1995 the building was purchased by the Government of Hong Kong. It has operated as the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Sydney, representing China’s Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong. The building is also used to promote Hong Kong tourism under the aegis of the HK Tourism Board.
(Photo credit: www.hktosydney.gov.hk)
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