ARIGHI BIANCHI IN-STORE AT The Rest Is History
It may be almost 160 years since Antonio Arighi began his humble company selling clocks and barometers to local farmers, but his business still has as much impact on the community as it ever did – only now, it’s no longer a barrow on a market street, but a multi-storey labyrinth of a building, set in the heart of the small town of Macclesfield, Cheshire. “It’s fair to say that our store has become a great British institution, famous for its unique building, high-quality products, levels of service that belong to a more genteel era and family ownership that continues to this day,” commented Richard Bianchi, descendant and Sales Manager.
The company maintains that its humble beginnings are still firmly entrenched in the modern-day running of the business. Fleeing from his war-stricken home in Casnate, near Lake Como, Antonio Arighi travelled to the poor silk weavers’ town of Macclesfield in the early 1850’s. With a natural flare for entrepreneurialism, he set up his own business selling barometers and clocks, which is where he started a mini-revolution in retail – namely, by inventing the ‘Try Before You Buy’ scheme.
The local farmers Antonio was trying to sell to didn’t want to know how well his clocks kept time or how beautiful the burnished mahogany cases were of his barometers. So Antonio tried a different tactic, as Richard explained: “After receiving the customary brush-off, Antonio would ask the farmer to look after it until he was next back in the area, to save him having to carry it all the way back home. The farmer, perhaps even feeling a tiny pang of guilt, would take pity on him and agree to help.
“On his return visit weeks later, Antonio would discover that the farmer had become so attached to the device that he
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