page_title: Robinsons & Co.
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Robinsons & Co. / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Centrepoint Shopping Centre on Orchard Road, Singapore, during the Christmas season. 中文: 新加坡乌节路上的Centrepoint购物中心的圣诞节装饰。
context_page_description: Robinsons & Co. Pte Ltd is a retail company which has department stores in Singapore and Malaysia. The company owns the Robinsons department store, John Little in Singapore and has franchise outlets of Marks and Spencer in both countries. The company has grown into one of the country's most renowned department stores. Robinsons celebrated their 160th anniversary in 2018.
  Robinsons & Co. Limited is currently part of the UAE-based Al-Futtaim Group.
context_section_description: Spicer & Robinson was established on February 25, 1858 by Philip Robinson formerly from the west of England and a brother of Elisha Smith Robinson  and his business partner James Gaborian Spicer, who was a former keeper of the Singapore jail, and a partner in the shipwright business, it was located at Commercial Square. However, on October 5, 1859, less than two years after the partnership, James Spicer pulled out from the partnership in 5 October 1859, and the company was known as Robinson & Co.. Robinson found a new partner, George Rappa Jr.. At this point of time, Commercial Square was renamed Raffles Place. Robinson & Co. moved to the corner of North Bridge Road and Coleman Street.
  Robinson developed his business a different way. He employed travelling representatives to canvass the Malay Archipelago and Borneo. Many of the Malay Rulers were among his customers, as well as King Mongkut of Siam.
  Near the end of 1864, there was a financial crisis, firms crashed and hundreds of shops closed down. Robinson managed to survive during this period of time. A new shop was opened at Battery Road, and the company's first assistant was appointed from England, T. C. Loveridge, which took charge of a newly opened tailoring department. Loveridge took lessons in Singapore from an experienced cutter and first tried out his skill by cutting out a frockcoat for a colleague. It fitted well and the latter became a partner in the business. Robinson offered to sell out for £1,000 (which was a huge sum of money then), but Loveridge rejected the offer.
  1881 was when Robinson died. His son, Stamford Raffles Robinson took over the business. In 1886, he employed A. W. Bean as assistant, eight years later making him his partner. The 1890s saw the company doing more business than ever before in the Malayan states (now Malaysia). The company launched a large advertising campaign in the Malay Mail and increase the number of travelling representatives. In 1891 the company moved to a bigger shop in Raffles Place.
  Robinsons also stocked musical instruments in the early 1900s as most homes had a piano, gramophone among many. Robinson & Co. became a limited company in 1920, when Robinson and Bean were still partners. The carefree days of Singapore and the then Malaya were gone when the Great Depression came. The company's main store in Kuala Lumpur, which was located next to the Whiteaway Laidlaw department store, the present-day site of the Malaysian head office for OCBC Bank by the Masjid Jamek LRT station on Jalan Tun Perak, opened in 1928 just before the start of the Depression. For many years the company operated at a loss until 1936 when it made a profit. Stamford Robinson died in 1935 at 83 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
  The company moved to a newer and bigger store at Raffles Chambers in November 1941. The building was air-conditioned at the café, men and women hairdressing salons. The Japanese bombed the building on December 8, 1941, but business opened as usual the next day. It suffered damage when it was attacked again on 13 February 1942. The last days of the British fell to the Japanese, saw only one person running the cafe.  Allied troops fighting in Malaya were unable to find supplies, and the Manager of the Kuala Lumpur branch could get camp beds for them.
  Both stores were looted in the final days of the war. However, the company's $5,000 worth of silver and other valuables could not be retrieved. Even the best locksmiths or oxy-acetylene torches could not open the room.
  The Raffles Place store was used as the headquarters of NAAFI and Ensa, the Services' entertainment organisation when the British returned to Singapore in 1945. Robinsons reopened in April 1946, business flourished and earned a profit of $1 million, the first time in history.
  Robinsons acquired a 76% stake on John Little and the whole company in the end of 1955. The Raffles Place store was fully air-conditioned by then and was the first in the region. Robinsons got the franchise for Marks and Spencer for Singapore in 1958. On 21 November 1972, the Raffles Place outlet caught fi
caption: Robinsons at Centrepoint, Orchard Road during Christmas 2004.
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