Firm has innovation and tradition off to a T

Sep 24 2007 by Rebekah Ashby, The Journal

RENOWNED tea company Ringtons, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, is looking back to the future as it draws on its proud history to push ahead as a dynamic North-East business.

Ringtons is a company well-known for its traditions, and among its beliefs are innovation and forward thinking.

The company’s founder Samuel Smith, the great-grandfather of current managing director Simon Smith, was a great innovator and he originated many of the traditions that are still important to Ringtons today.

He’d be delighted to see that, after 100 years, his company can still implement his traditions in the 21st Century.

In 1931 he made a film about Ringtons which was the first outside broadcast with sound in Britain. The company continues to stream the pioneering film on its website to bring together old and new media.

The website has been a great success in keeping Ringtons connected to its customers locally and nationally.

It has also engaged expat UK customers and a global interest and from this Ringtons has made deliveries to other countries, including Canada and the United States.

Meanwhile, back in Britain, the company has opened five shops and has plans for a national network of such outlets.

It is branching out into an amazingly diverse range of teas, from White Raspberry to Mint Choc and Simply Energising to Love Potion No. 9.

Another of Ringtons’ traditions is its commitment to personal service, which is why it has had such an outstanding success with – and gained much fame from – its doorstep delivery service.

Ringtons customers remain loyal, not only because of the quality of the service the company provides, but also because of the quality of its products.

It employs the latest methods to make sure its tea has a fine taste.

To further its personal service and quality, it has the same friendly, knowledgeable relationship with its shop customers as it enjoys with its doorstep customers.

As a result of its’ innovative concepts it is now a £30m business, with more than 500 employees and 300,000 customers.

The North-East remains the heart of Ringtons’ business and that’s why the company feels honoured to have been given the freedom of the City of Newcastle this year and of course to have been included in The Journal’s Top 250.

Samuel Smith would certainly have approved.

Smith was born in 1872 and raised in Lady Pit Lane in Leeds. At the age of 10, Samuel joined the Leeds branch of York’s Ridgeway Tea Merchants.

He developed a flair for door-to-door selling and was keen to branch out on his own. Because of a contractual agreement, he was unable to set up in business within 50 miles, so he moved to Newcastle.

With an initial investment of £250 from business partner William Titterington, Samuel began making door-to-door tea deliveries to customers by horse and carriage.

They took the last half of the name Titterington and added an S for Smith to create Ringtons. A year later, two horses were in operation and the business had four assistants to cope with the rapidly-expanding enterprise.

By 1914, Samuel Smith had bought out Titterington’s share and Ringtons truly was growing into a family business when Samuel’s son Douglas joined as a tea delivery boy.

There were 11 vans and 17 employees at the Heaton business but during the First World War many employees joined up and rationing and sales laws were put into force.

However, Samuel promised the servicemen their jobs would be waiting for them on their return and sure enough, all 12 surviving members of his former staff came back to their jobs. In the early 1920s, Ringtons bought two motorised vehicles. But it seemed the housewives of the 1920s preferred their tea delivered by horse and cart, and it wasn’t until 1954 that the last horse retired.

In 1927, Samuel returned to his birth home in Leeds. He demolished his former home and rebuilt it as the new Ringtons factory.

It still stands to this day as a Sikh temple and retains the original Ringtons engravings on the exterior.

The following year Ringtons had opened its new headquarters in Algernon Road, Byker – where it still remains to this day – as well as offices all over the North of England. The Smith family believed strongly in values and looking after their employees, so in 1937, the Smiths took all the Ringtons’ employees to Scarborough for the day, which is now remembered and archived in the business as the 1937 Scarborough trips.

Ringtons was once again threatened in 1939 by the Second World War.

By 1943, 400 employees had been called up and 200 vans were taken off the road.

Samuel Smith died at 77 in 1949 and his sons took on the business.

Now in the fourth generation of Smiths, Ringtons continues to flourish as a family business.