HAMILTON shoppers got a chance to reminisce this week when a central Gray Street façade (right) got an update. 

The building that now houses Trev’s once traded as A. Miller & Co. and was regarded as the grand old lady of Hamilton city stores.

Due to the many ways it resembled Melbourne’s famous Bourke St department store it was regarded in this district as the “Myers of Hamilton”.

The retailer once encompassed 30 separate departments including drapery, clothing, groceries, delicatessen, hardware, crockery, footwear, sports gear, ironmongery, millinery, tailoring, alcohol, dressmaking – and more.    

Like the city Myers store, plate glass window boxes facing the footpath always displayed the best and latest on offer – fashion for the races, promotion for public events, charitable causes – and all brightly lit up for night display.

During the spring and autumn fashion changes, there were in-store mannequin parades, with local models like the mayoress, Miss Yulunga Festival and Miss Hamilton Racegoer who drew ladies from miles around.    

Despite what many believe these days supermarkets weren’t the first to introduce self-service in this country – and certainly not in Hamilton.

Here that now defunct Millers deserves this crown.   

Their self service in grocery was a novelty in the late 1950s and much ridiculed.

Critics then assumed pilfering would quickly end the initiative.

But, of course, “stock shrinkage” was small enough for the concept to become standard practice in most stores.

Today supermarkets seem happy to accept some loss from missed scans at checkouts in favor of reduced staff numbers.

Around 1960 Millers staff numbered 100.       

During the Christmas holidays the store provided work experience jobs for about 15 youngsters, scattered around departments.   

There was a ladies’ rest room and facilities for baby changes and feeding.

The store employed two tea ladies to service management, staff and customers with a cup of brew and biscuits.

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UNTIL the 50s there were four competing big retail outlets in Hamilton - Millers, a similar department store across the road called Thomson’s; Laidlaws and Strachans.  

These businesses virtually controlled retail trade, they decided which hours shops opened and so forth.

In 1978, with big department stores struggling with costs and small niche competitors, the “powers that be” decided to close Millers and sell the premises.

Like their direct competitor, Thomson’s, it was found that as an independent business they didn’t have the buying power of newcomers to town like Coles and Woolworths supermarkets.  

Permewans became the new owners and quickly made use of their acquisition by transferring much of their business from Cox St to Gray St.

That didn’t work out well so after them came “Go-Low”, then “Chickenfeed” and today “Trev’s Bargain Centre” controls the main street’s prize site.