Perry Boys: The Casual Gangs of Manchester and Salford by Ian Hough

Author:Ian Hough [Hough, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908479051
Publisher: Milo Books Ltd
Published: 2011-12-26T23:00:00+00:00

While in Manchester innumerable shops were now stocked to the gills with much of this sportswear, Liverpudlians found scant domestic relief from their fever. Expeditions to Manchester had proved quite dangerous, but worthwhile, and then a shop opened in Liverpool that became a goldmine. ‘In the winter of 1980, Robert Wade Smith attempted to have Adidas supply his Adidas concession store in Top Man with the trainer Forest Hills,’ said Hewitson. ‘There were five hundred pairs in the country at the time, which had been sitting in a warehouse for nearly a year. Eventually, in October, Wade Smith received just ten pairs, which went on sale for £39.99, a ground-breaking sum at the time. They were all bought within days. Wade Smith had proven his own hypothesis that the Liverpool punters were willing to pay a lot more for a rarer and different shoe. Now for the remainder: Wade Smith received the other four hundred and ninety pairs in the run-up to Christmas, 1981, and they were gone by Christmas Eve. His reward was a bottle of whisky. It was a repeat of the Stan Smith avalanche of two Christmases previous, with a shoe that cost twice as much. Only the Kio explosion of autumn 1980 had thwarted an Adidas Christmas treble during that busy period, and Kios were really a form of imitation Stan Smith.

‘In 1982, Wade Smith opened his own shop on Slater Street, and the age of Scousers risking their liberty for trainers was over. The shop was broken into before its opening, on November 1, and seventy percent of the stock was taken, but this convinced Wade Smith of the value of the commodity, and he pressed on with his mission. On a voyage to Brussels, in search of a legendary trainer that threatened to put him out of business – Adidas Trimm-Trab – Wade Smith encountered some Scousers waiting for the ferry to Ostend. They talked, and on the train back to Liverpool, the lads appeared from nowhere, bearing many pairs of this sought-after shoe. Wade Smith haggled them down to £16 a pair, and started knocking the shoe out at £34.99. This was Wade Smith’s Golden Fleece. He had truly become a Scouse Argonaut. After numerous arguments with Adidas bigwigs, Wade Smith travelled to Germany and established a trade link direct with Adidas. Wade Smith was now on the map. Before long, the shop was importing shoes from Germany, France, Austria, Holland and Ireland, and was selling tens of thousands of trainers. The years of 1981 and 1982 were to be the pinnacle for the cult of rare training shoes.

‘It soon became apparent that Robert Wade Smith was able to get his own trainers. Now, all the scallies started offering him the top makes of sportswear, T-shirts, sweatshirts, and tracksuits. He sold four times the expected figure in the first year, and soon a larger store was needed. After a couple of moves, he settled in the Glacier-Chicago Buildings, close to Matthew Street.’

The Scouse

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