Sir Pryce Pryce-Jones (16 October 1834 – 11 January 1920) was a Welsh entrepreneur who formed the first mail order business, revolutionising how products were sold. Creating the first mail order catalogues in 1861 – which consisted of woollen goods – for the first time customers could order by post, and the goods were delivered by railway. The BBC summed up his legacy as "The mail order pioneer who started a billion-pound industry". The Queen knighted him in 1887. He left school at 12, Newtown had always had a woollen industry, and it was the local Welsh flannel which formed the mainstay of Pryce-Jones' business. He built a warehouse, with its own post office, next to the railway line.
The further expansion of the railways in the years that followed allowed Pryce Jones to take orders from further afield and his business grew rapidly. He built up an impressive list of customers – among them Florence Nightingale as well as Queen Victoria, the Princess of Wales and royal households across Europe. He also began selling Welsh flannel from Newtown to America and Australia, amassing over 200,000 customers. He exported the product around the world, at one point landing a contract with the Russian Army for 60,000 rugs.
Several times, he was forced to relocate to bigger premises, which was geared to getting goods out "as fast as possible". and Albert Pryce-Jones were international footballers for Wales.
Death
Pryce-Jones died in 1920 at the age of 85. The company he had built up over decades was hit badly by the depression of the 1920s and 1930s and was taken over by Lewis's of Liverpool in 1938.