Famous Dudley toy and bike shop to close after 160 years

B D Price in Sedgley. near Dudley, is to close after present owner Dan Price decided to retire after 60 years supplying toys and cycles to youngsters from around the area. 

The business dates back to 1865 when Dan's great-grandfather D J Price and his wife opened a cycle shop from the front of their terraced house in High Holborn, Sedgley.

Today, the shop - which is located, more or less, on the site where it started - seems like a relic from a bygone era, even if the premises themselves are actually quite modern. Shelves and shelves of Airfix kits, train sets Corgi models and Scalextric cars. Tins of paint, brushes and polystyrene cement, an aisle of dolls, and dozens of bikes next to the cash register.

At its height, the business also had branches in Great Bridge, Kingswinford and Wolverhampton. But Dan says a combination of a decline in traditional toys, the move towards internet shopping, and tax rises in last year's Budget means it is not possible to sell the business on to a new owner.

"It's sad, but I'm quite relieved to finally be retiring," he says.

"Twenty years ago we might have been able to sell the business on, but you can see how quiet it is now. 

"Because we own the building, we don't have to worry about rent. But if we did, we wouldn't have been able to carry on. We do online sales, and that is what has kept the business going. This current government isn't helping at all, you can't increase taxes by the amount they have.

"The young lads don't buy Airfix kits, its all click click, click on their electronic devices.

"I recently saw a man who said 'I used to make toy prams for you', but how many girls do you see pushing toy prams today?

"We don't sell board games any more, either, people don't play them, it is all click, click on the computer games.

"The majority of our customers today are older people who collect the toys and models that they had as kids for nostalgic purposes."

Also calling it a day will be Dan's sister Pat Smith, although she has largely taken a back seat from the business in recent years.

Dan says the business expanded in 1885 when it acquired a former nail factory in neighbouring Tipton Street and began making bikes, which were sold under the Sedgley Beacon name. 

"They were available in any colour you like, so long as it was black, with gold and red lines to set them off," he says.

In the 1930s, Dan's father Bernard took over the shop, which was renamed B D Price. 

"An extension was built, that virtually doubled the size of the production facility," says Dan. "But when the war came along, the factory was taken over for special war production, making beds for troop ships and hospitals, and the bike production was wound down after that."

Dan was born in the cellar of the shop in High Holborn in 1940, and found himself helping out at an early age. But after leaving school he instead decided to train as an accountant, returning in the mid 1960s following the death of his father.

"When my father died in the early 60s, my mother decided to continue running the shop," he says. The construction of a new shopping parade in Sedgley High Street in the 1960s allowed the business to move to a more spacious shop, and business boomed.

"We were one of the first stockists of Playmobil," Dan recalls. In the late 1980s, as the lease on the shop came to an end, the opportunity arose for him to return to High Holborn, when the original premises and a neighbouring butcher's shop came onto the market. 

"That enabled us to demolish the two terraced properties, and build the current store with an office above."

The closing down sale has begun, although Dan and Pat do not yet have a closing date. 

"The way things are going, it will take us four or five years to sell the stock," he says with a wry smile. 

"Then we will put the premises on the market."

Dan says he plans to use his well-earned retirement to spend more time with his grandchildren.

What will he miss most when he retires.

"Probably looking at the way things are at the moment, a lot of boredom," he says, again with a waspish glint in his eye, before adding: "I have met a lot of very nice people over the years."