Customer Centricity has been around for a lot longer than most people think!

Read about how Tobias Hardcastle gives us an old perspective on being Customer Centric.



Tobias, when he’s not knocking down office doors, lives in a large mansion of grey stone in a prosperous neighbourhood on the outskirts of Manchester.

The firm of which he’s undisputed master, Hardcastle Knitwear Limited, and which employs more than five hundred people, is located in the northern English town of Salford, just over the River Irwell from Manchester.

It is a raw, autumnal Sunday afternoon in early October, 1865. Queen Victoria is on the throne and the pound is worth a pound. Abroad, a large number of foreigners, dwelling in what Tobias Hardcastle regards as nations that are little more than a Mistake, are being taught right and wrong by officers of the British Empire, who have the backing of the British army and the navy. Hardcastle regards both of these as impossible to defeat. Indeed, in his mind, history is simply a series of battles won by England.

An ample seven‐course luncheon has been served by a number of servants and footmen to the Hardcastle family – who comprise Tobias, his simpering and self‐effacing wife Elizabeth, his son Tom, and daughter Jenny.

Jenny has just made the mistake of tentatively enquiring whether her father will allow her young man, William, to meet him, as they wish to become engaged.

‘And how does your William intend to support you, Jen?’ Tobias demands, with his usual brusqueness.

‘Papa, he loves writing poetry and wishes to be a poet.’ Tobias almost falls off his chair. Finally, he stands up, drawing his coat‐tails up behind him as he always does when he wants to make a big point.

‘Poetry?’ he exclaims. ‘Poetry? I’ll tell you what poetry is. When my five hundred workers are all hard at work at their machines making money for me: that’s what I call poetry!’

‘So... you won’t consider the possibility of my become engaged to William, papa?’ Jenny asks, timidly.

‘You get engaged to a poet? I’d sooner grasp hold of Hardcastle Knitwear Limited – lock, stock and barrel – and toss it all into the river!’

Jenny bursts into tears and flees to her room, where she consoles herself by re‐reading the love scenes in Our Mutual Friend. Tobias goes to stand in front of the blazing fire, his hands lifting his coat‐tails so that the fire can warm his far from inextensive posterior. He delivers a lecture to Tom (who as the eldest son of a Victorian factory master, is, according to tradition, a wastrel) on the perils of idleness, in which the aphorism ‘the devil finds work for idle hands’ has featured substantially. Tom, a deeply sullen look on his face, is sprawled over the room’s most comfortable sofa, avoiding his father’s gaze.

Altogether this has not been an agreeable afternoon for Tobias Hardcastle. He is very much looking forward to the morning, when he will be at work again, and work is his favourite activity.

He never openly shows his pleasure at work, though, preferring to adopt a permanent frown to ‘keep my hands on their toes’, as he puts it, in a rather complex metaphor. He always refers – as it’s usual to do in 1865 – to his workers as ‘hands’. But somewhere deep inside his stony heart he loves touring his domain, watching his workers hard at labour, and listening to the incessant clicking of his hundreds of knitwear machines making money for him.
Also, the strange thing about Tobias Hardcastle – and the thing that interests us most about him as far as The Customer‐Centric You is concerned, is that, despite his general intolerant manner, his short temper with subordinates, his readiness to sack a ‘hand’ for almost any infringement whatsoever of the factory’s draconian rules, his inability to make his children see him as anything more than a wealthy tyrant, he is indeed extremely customer‐centric. Find out more in The Customer Centric You...............