The company began life on a street barrow in 1863 when John Upson started to sell his shoes on Woolwich Town Market.
John was born in 1823 in Saxmundham, Suffolk. In the 1841 Census he is recorded as an apprentice shoemaker to a William Gardener in Market Hill, Framlingham in Suffolk. He married Hannah Hearn in Suffolk in 1843 and by 1851 they had moved to Newington, Surrey, which was in the centre of London’s leather industry. They lived at 20 Union Row with 3 children.
Soon after, they moved to the Bexley where 4 of their 9 children were born between 1852 and 1857. During this period in Bexley, John suffered 2 pieces of bad fortune. First, in 1853, his brother-in-law James, who was working for him as a cordwainer (shoemaker), was accused of embezzlement by John, and sent for trial. Second, in 1854, John was made bankrupt.
He may have moved back to Framlingham at some point after this, as one of his sons was born there in 1858, and there is a record of another insolvency involving a John Upson, a bootmaker, in Framlingham in 1859. Despite the setbacks, eventually business grew, and from the barrow he graduated to his first store in Woolwich called the Great Boot Provider.
John Upson moved again, first to Herne Hill (1891 Census) and finally to St.Leonards, Sussex (1901 Census).
He died on 21st October 1909, a wealthy man, leaving over £96,000 in his will to his son Frederick William- that equates to upwards of 10 million sterling at today's value.
By the early 20th century under Frederik the company had numerous branches throughout London and south-east England.
Upson’s became a public company in 1920 and acquired Barron & Co. (with 24 shops trading under that name) in 1925. The head office stood on Great Dover Street in Southwark. By 1927 the company had 135 shops trading under the names Dolcis, Barron & Co., the London Boot Co., Upson & Co., and the High Life Shoe Co. No fewer than nine of the group’s branches were sited on London’s Oxford Street, which had an extraordinary concentration of shoe shops.
The exact origin of the name ‘Dolcis’, which is thought to be Swiss, is uncertain. Historical photographs show that Dolcis shops of the 1920s (like those of High Life, above) were ornate affairs, in a rather traditional Edwardian style. The Charing Cross branch, for example, had expensively curved display windows with ornate transom lights incorporating a ‘DS’ monogram. A glimpse of the branch close to the Savoy Hotel on the Strand (left) in the late 1920s reveals a more modern approach, with illuminated lettering.
In 1931 Upson’s announced: ‘We have adopted a modern and distinctive type of front which has been most successful and is making a very marked impression on the shopping public. The latest examples are the new fronts which have just been installed at The High Life Shoe Stores at 146-148 Oxford-street, and 368-370 Oxford-street, W.1, and the Dolcis fronts at Victoria, Kingston, and elsewhere.’ (from The Times, 20 March 1931, 24). A similar aesthetic was being applied across other brands within the group. The style was art deco, involving geometric display windows, grilles, lights and doors, with bold neon lettering.
Ellis E. Somake (1908-1998) was appointed the staff architect to Dolcis in 1948 and oversaw the post-war expansion of the chain. His brief was to produce ‘an entirely new look to their new and refurbished shops, making them the most up-to-date vehicle for the sale of FASHION shoes . . . with the architecture and interior design to reflect this’ (Somake’s own words, in a letter dated 6 June 1985). So long as they kept within budget, Somake and his assistants – including R. W. Freeborn and Geoffrey H. Uffindell – could ‘hatch and implement our own ideas both in regard to the shopfront and fascia design, the interior planning and decoration, and in the case of an open site, the design of the building as well’. Reflecting this, Somake’s team worked with different shopfitters from job to job, though some specialist contractors were employed consistently: Minter, for example, invariably supplied Dolcis carpets.
One of the most important Dolcis outlets of the 1930s opened in 1936 on the lower floors of Stratford Court, a new block of flats (and later a hotel) at 350 Oxford Street. The architects of this tall red-brick neo-Georgian building – Gunton & Gunton – worked alongside Dolcis’s staff architect, Harry Simcock. This was one of the first shops in London to take advantage of new rules which permitted a projecting canopy, a feature which has since been removed. As at other Dolcis shops of the 1930s (such as Brixton in 1937) the shopfront made use of shiny ‘Staybrite’ steel. It had an extensive arcade: a deep lobby with no fewer than six freestanding or ‘island’ showcases. At the heart of the shop was a dramatic staircase with a sweeping silver-bronze balustrade and ebonised handrail. The floor, throughout, was thickly carpeted in a bold geometric design. The shop is now occupied by Disney.
In 1956, it had 250 stores and became part of the British Shoe Corporation, a division of Sears Holdings, and in 1967 was relocated to Leicester. In 1988 Dolcis was chosen by British Shoe Corporation as the pilot company for the installation of EPOS equipment.
In December 1997 the Dolcis business was bought by the Alexon Group and venture capitalist, Electra Fleming, and relocated to Luton. In 2006 Dolcis was sold by Alexon in a deal involving Scottish retail entrepreneur John Kinnaird. Kinnaird unveiled an ambitious plan to refurbish the chain's stores, boost the fashionability of its products and update the brand. Plans were to see 20 shops refitted by the end of 2007, another 20 in the first half of 2008 and the remainder by the end of that year.
At the end of 2007, Dolcis had 65 High Street branches across the UK. In addition to these there were also over 150 Dolcis concessions, primarily within Bay Trading and Envy stores. In 2007 Dolcis began trading online.
The company was making a loss of £6m a year on the sale of £62m worth of shoes. On 21 January 2008 the retailer fell into administration, partially as a result of the slowdown in spending due to the onset of the credit crunch, which led to a recession. On 13 February 2008 administrators KPMG[4] announced that the brand name Dolcis and 24 of the company's 185 shops had been bought by Stylo Group of Bradford. 800 former Dolcis staff lost their jobs, and the shops were rebranded as Barratts Shoes.
However, the company reformed and relaunched its new online collection in 2012 after being acquired by the Jacobson Group. Dolcis Shoes's then owner, Macintosh Retail Group, was declared bankrupt in December 2015.
