Tillie Abrams, 98, founded William Ashley China, North American retail destination for upscale dinnerware and crystal
Hoodoo
There was no William Ashley running the shop, but there was a Tillie Abrams
The founder of Toronto's iconic tableware company picked a man's name
for her store to maintain credibility
June 10, 2010
MARINA STRAUSS
RETAILING REPORTER
http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20100610.OBABRAMS10//TPStory/Obituaries
William Ashley China is a North American retail destination for upscale
dinnerware and crystal with a bridal registry that has served as a model
for other stores. But few of its customers realized that the man behind
the Ashley name was actually a woman.
Tillie Abrams founded the iconic chain in 1947 on Toronto's tony Bloor
Street West, and became a trailblazer with its lucrative bridal registry
several years later, at a time when telling your guests what gifts to
buy was considered presumptuous.
It was also unusual for a woman to be at the helm of a business.
Affectionately known in the industry as "Mrs. Ashley," she picked the
retailer's name from an encyclopedia because, in a man's world, she felt
that a masculine moniker would give the retailer credibility.
"She created the name because gentlemen ran businesses, not ladies,"
explains Peter Moore, former president of Waterford Wedgwood Canada, one
of Ashley's key suppliers.
Abrams, to whom Ashley executives had turned to for advice about an ad
just a few weeks earlier, passed away on May 18 at the age of 98.
Against all odds, the company survived and thrived under her leadership,
even though today it faces tough competition.
"Although running a company as a single woman with two young children
would be difficult by today's standards, she took this on without
questioning herself in the forties, when women simply just didn't run
businesses," says Jackie Chiesa, general manager at Ashley and a 30-year
veteran with the company.
"Consequently, men found it very unsettling to be dealing with a woman.
... Creating the name of the company William Ashley always led her
business contacts to believe she was acting on her husband's behalf and
created a cushion between her and her male business contacts."
Today, Ashley remains family-owned, run by Abrams's grandson Dean Stark.
Her sons, Alan and Brian Stark, were active in the business, Alan as CEO
and Brian as legal counsel, but have now retired.
Born in Poland in 1912, Abrams arrived in Canada as an infant but came
by retailing naturally. Her father owned a paint and wallpaper company
in Toronto, where she worked after school as a teenager. Since she was
the eldest of five children, her father put her in charge of the
business when he went away with her mother on extended trips to Europe.
"Her father was very impressed by her confidence at a young age," says
Chiesa, who considers her former boss her mentor. "It was pretty
unwavering. He put a lot of confidence in her. He just gave her the
wings and she went with it. ... She had an innate business sense."
She was particularly drawn to the company's giftware section, especially
its cups and saucers and other tableware. Selecting and purchasing
wallpaper laid the groundwork for her transition to fine china because
popular wallpaper designs often find their way into dinnerware patterns,
Chiesa says. "It was a natural extension."
Abrams always had an independent spirit. She loved cars - and driving
them - in an era when few women got behind the wheel. At 17, she got her
first car - a convertible with a "rumble seat" - and drove her friends
to Wasaga Beach. She was among the first to buy an Edsel when they were
introduced in the late 1950s. She was fondly known as "Turbo Til"
because "she never quite accepted the introduction of speed limits," the
Stark family says in an e-mail.
She opened her first store in Toronto on the Danforth under the banner
Maple Leaf Wallpaper and Gifts, but she was surrounded by men in her
work life, dealing with suppliers and travelling frequently to U.S.
trade shows. When she tried to lease a store on Bloor Street, the
property manager asked to see her husband. She was divorced from her
first husband and later married Maxwell Abrams, who passed away before her.
On the sales floor until the late 1980s, she got to know customers and
often pitched the sturdiness of bone china. "She used to take a bone
china plate and whack it," Chiesa says. "You could hear the bone china
plate throughout the store. ... There are still a couple of ladies on
our floor who use the same tactic to demonstrate the strength of bone
china."
She also insisted on stocking plenty of inventory to give customers the
instant gratification of walking away with their purchase or getting
fast delivery, rather than having to wait weeks for it to be shipped
from the producer.
But one of her biggest legacies was the launch of the bridal registry in
the 1950s.
Early on, Abrams recognized the power of brides. They bought what they
needed to set up homes, and then often became lifetime customers. Abrams
courted not only the bride, but also her guests. In Canada alone today,
the annual bridal registry business is estimated to be worth almost
$1.4-billion.
Abrams got the idea from a visit to Marshall Field's in Chicago, which
was a pioneer in the registry business. "It's one of the things you do
as a good retailer: look at other good retailers," Chiesa says. "She
made it a point to be aware of all of the top retail establishments and
visited them."
Today, Ashley has had to adapt to a dramatically shifting gift registry
landscape. Grooms often are just as involved as brides in choosing
wedding gifts, says Bettie Bradley, editor-in-chief of trade publication
Today's Bride. Couples seek a broader array of gifts, ranging from lamps
to lawn mowers and even vacations. Other retailers have rushed to pick
up a bigger piece of the registry business, including Pottery Barn and
Crate & Barrel. While Ashley was once the bride's main registry, today
it's often the couple's secondary one, Bradley says. "People register
for everything from soup to nuts. Table top has become a very minor part
of the registry."
Despite the challenges, the company has hung on to its gift-registry
market share in past years, moving online to reach a wider audience and
adapting to changing tastes, Chiesa says. It's updated its dinnerware to
include popular fashion designer lines, including Versace, Kate Spade
and Marc Jacobs. And it's followed the trends by replacing once-popular
gold trims with platinum finishes, and colourful hues with white.
A couple of years ago, the Stark family moved to shore up the business
by branching out into the supplier side of the trade and snapping up the
Canadian distributorship for Royal Crown Derby, a British bone china
table- and giftware company.
And while Abrams was no longer a regular presence in the stores in her
later years - a second outlet opened in 1989 in Mississauga - she kept
in touch and advised on product selection and advertising.
And she attended industry functions.
In the early 1990s she was sitting at the same table as Moore at a
Fashion Cares dinner.
For entertainment, a male and female dancer, clad only in tights, ski
boots and skis, performed a seductive number with their bodies entangled
at odd angles.
"I turned to her and asked, 'Are you okay with this?'" recalls Moore,
now executive director of the Canadian Gift and Tableware Association.
"And she smiled and said: 'It's nothing like Paris.'"
She leaves her two sons, five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
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