“Shelf interest!” ad for William of Orange marmalades (1966)
An advert for the Co-Op’s own product ranges seen in their own ‘house’ magazine Producer, the trade journal issued by the Co-Operative Wholesale Society to the buyers of the many hundreds of individual Co-Op retail societies who sold the movement’s own produced goods to the memebership. The CWS, owned by the retail socities themselves, produced and manufactured a vast range of products from a huge estate of farms, works and factories that covered everything from food, tea & coffee, tobacco to furniture, clothes, domestic appliances and household goods. By the 1980s most if not all these enterprises had been closed or disposed of.
This advert is for the Co-op’s own brand marmalade, cheekily called “William of Orange” after the Dutch Prince of Orange who became King William III of England (William II of Scotland) in 1689. The CWS at the time had three preserve and jam works at Middleton (nr Manchester), Reading and Stockton and the advert shows the long lived Wheatsheaf logo.
