A Suitable Man: The Eccentric Empire of Fletcher Jones by Jock Serong – Our Review.

Our Review…

A Suitable Man — Jock Serong

I thoroughly enjoyed A Suitable Man. Like many Australians, I knew the Fletcher Jones name and remembered the stores, but I knew very little about the extraordinary man behind them.

Jock Serong tells the story of David Fletcher Jones with great warmth, following his unlikely journey from a difficult childhood and the horrors of the First World War to travelling salesman, tailor and ultimately one of Australia’s most innovative business leaders.

What particularly resonated with me was Jones’s belief that commercial success and treating people well were not competing ideas. His business was built around profit sharing and staff ownership, and he appeared to have a genuine belief that the people who helped create the success should participate in it. Remarkably, he achieved this while building one of Australia’s most recognisable businesses.

There is also a fascinating social history running through the book. Jones’s life spans an enormous period of change in Australia, and his story provides a window into the country we were becoming.

Serong has produced an engaging and very human biography. More than anything, it left me thinking about what constitutes a successful life and a successful business. There are lessons in Fletcher Jones’s story that remain just as relevant today.

Highly recommended. Review by Marty Maher – Great Escape Books

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‘In 1924, into the tiny town of Warrnambool, which then had a population of a fraction under 4000 people, there came a travelling salesman…’ Australians of a certain generation all know Fletcher Jones – the stores, the clothing, the daggy dad slacks – but not many people know the extraordinary story of the man who founded the store. A Suitable Man tells the remarkable life and achievements of Fletcher Jones.

Many Australians know of Fletcher Jones – the stores, the clothing, the daggy dad slacks – but few know the extraordinary man behind it all. David Fletcher Jones was an autodidact, a wanderer and dreamer who became a visionary businessman and social entrepreneur.

His rise was unlikely. The stammering, motherless son of an impoverished Bendigo blacksmith, he left school at thirteen and ended WWI buried alive by a shell explosion in France. Despite the horrors of war, he never lost his humour, optimism or deep regard for people. After an epiphany in the veteran’s dole queue, he decided to become master of his destiny. He began as a travelling salesman in the Western District before opening a tailor’s shop. Business boomed. Later, he bought five acres outside Warrnambool for his factory and put a sign over the front: ‘Fletcher Jones and Staff’. Because not only was Fletcher Jones revolutionising menswear with his ready-to-wear trousers, but remarkably, his manufacturing and retail empire was founded on profit-sharing and staff ownership.

His life is a fascinating reflection of Australia’s twentieth century progress across social policy, immigration, manufacturing, the city and country divide, the rise and fall of wool. But most important, perhaps, is what we can learn from his fundamental human decency and his determination to run an enterprise for profit while seeking to do good at individual and societal levels. There are lessons for us all in a life like Fletcher’s.

‘Everyone knows the name, but no-one knew the story – until this fresh, sprightly and immensely readable biography.’ Gideon Haigh

‘In A Suitable Man, Jock Serong deftly unpacks the enigmatic and legendary figure of Fletcher Jones … and surprises and humanises a boss with ‘a desk in the middle of the shop floor’.’ Shane Howard