Of the product range the "made to measure" suits were a success, offering a cheap tailored opportunity for customers at the time, costing only 30 shillings, equivalent to £203 in 2023.

A year after it was founded, the newly named Freemans of London moved to larger premises at 215 Lavender Hill, Wandsworth.

Company staff are affectionately nicknamed "The Lavender Hill Mob", some 45 years prior to the famous British film of the same name being made.

Expansion also meant that the company needed to find larger premises; it moved to 139 Clapham Road, London, in 1937.

By 1937 Freemans had expanded its product line to include important labour-saving household service items such as vacuum cleaners and washing machines.

Being situated so close to London had unfortunate consequences during the Second World War as the Clapham offices were bombed, killing 23 members of staff and destroying all company records.

However, the company continued to trade, now limited to a much smaller range of products due to the scarcity of suppliers and more essential use of raw materials.

The credit proposition was also giving Freemans a USP that wasn't available on the high street, and was also perhaps the primary reason catalogue shops such as Grattan, Littlewoods and Empire Stores did so well during this period.

[4] In 1988 Freemans was purchased by Sears PLC, whose other investments included bookmakers William Hill and the controlling arm of Selfridges, turning it into one of the country's largest retail organisations.

The idea won many awards for creativity and ingenuity, but was subsequently superseded by the presence of an online catalogue in the form of a company e-commerce website which was created in 1997.

Freemans embraced the concept of celebrity endorsement and elicited the help of one of the world's first international supermodels, Twiggy, to promote the brand in the 1960s.

[11] TV presenter Des Lynam was chosen to promote the catalogue company's leisurewear in the early 1990s, securing a five-year deal.

[citation needed] Other celebrities associated with the brand include British swimmer and Olympic silver medallist Sharron Davies and Liverpool-born TV presenter Keith Chegwin.