£3000 A Year

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 44, 22 February 1936, Page 13

£3OOO A Year

EARNED BY A CLEVER WOMAN SELLING GOODS TO CHINESE LONDON, Jan. IS. An Englishwoman found herself stranded—no money, no prospects, a family to support. That was in 1922. The opportunities open to women in commerce did not satisfy her. The most they could earn was £lO a week, and it wasn't enough for her. So she cast her eyes over the world, decided China held promise, went there, and devolopcd a great trading organisation. Now she earns £3OOO a year. Beatrice Thompson, black haired, handsome, still in her early thirties, is back in London for a while. “Yes,” she said, “I couldn’t see any great future if it was to be bounded by £lO a week. I knew I could, make more—must make more. I knew China, and knew that its teeming millions were waiting to buy goods made in Britain. I went over there, opened a small office, and started the attack. That was in Hongkong, and there was plenty of work. I started selling them cosmetics, taking merchandise right up into the interior. It had never been done before by a woman, and, of course, there was opposition. “I taught them how to use make-up adopt new standards in dress and elegance, and it went well. That opened up a market for the whole list of women’s preparations —creams, soaps perfumes and the rest. It is worth £1,500,000 a year now. I speak four different Chinese dialects fluently. It helped a lot. Then the slump came, and trade went stagnant. So I took to the interior even more new lines—things they had never heard of. Patent foods, beverages—l opened up the market first and then sold the goods. “Of course a lot of it was uphill work, earning confidence with the actual manufacturers. I sold British cars, motor oil, woollen wear, clothes, medicines. Now I’m going to sell them British light airplanes. I fly a great deal, and I think the time has come for it in China. It is a big firm now. One of the directors, a retired naval officer, is my husband. There are several influential Chinese. I am over here at present to organise a big fair, to be held this year in China, to demonstrate the resources of British industry.”