The Winterbottom Book Cloth Company
Intense competition between bookcloth manufacturers in what was a relatively small market, had been building in Britain long before AW&S was formed. Bookcloth production from Victoria Mills was strong but uneconomic as a result of severe downward pressure on prices caused by the intense competition. Winterbottom opened negotiations with his three main rivals at the peak of the price war in 1885, in an effort to control pricing by creating a syndicate, while maintaining overall production quality. After years of damaging predatory pricing, the remaining companies were struggling to survive but it was an uneven struggle as AW&S losses from the bookcloth business were to some extent offset by their thriving tracing cloth business. By 1890, Winterbottom had managed to align a syndicate to control prices consisting of the top four bookcloth companies, including some smaller operators in England. But Winterbottom saw an opportunity to extend his reach beyond Britain, turning his attention to the United States and to Germany as potential export markets. He travelled in the same year to both countries, taking out patents for book binders' cloth even though bookcloth production was already thriving in both countries (ibid.).
In 1891, thirty-eight years after the launch of their father's bookcloth business, Winterbottom had absorbed nine of his business competitors in England, the US and Germany by merging them into The Winterbottom Book Cloth Company Ltd. (WBCC), installing himself as chairman. At the age of thirty in the space of four years, with ruthless efficiency, Winterbottom had ensured that The WBCC dominated bookcloth trade in Britain and America for the next century and that his brand became the global standard for bookbinding.
Since its inception in 1823, the introduction of bookcloth in the US was largely synchronous with England's, facilitated in the US by the introduction of case construction methods of bookbinding, which led to progressive mechanisation. But the US continued throughout the 19th century to depend on England for imported bookcloth from companies that included, among others, Archibald Winterbottom (Co.). Local manufacturers of bookcloth like the Staten Island Dye Works, began producing bookcloth sometime before 1877 but were forced out of the bookcloth business in 1883 by cheaper imports from England. Staten Island Dye Works reverted to only dyeing but were keen to return to bookcloth and wrote to Winterbottom in 1890 to offer a partnership. The offer was declined, however, as Winterbottom was already making moves of his own in the US.
Following the failure of the bookcloth industry in the US in 1883, the United States Government formed the view that it was desirable for the American book trade to have at least one local supplier of bookcloth. This view was supported by a group of New England cotton merchants, who opened Interlaken Mills, in Arkwright, Rhode Island with the express intent of supplying bookcloth to the local printing and bookbinding industry. As production began, Interlaken Mills gradually obtained an increasing share in the US market for bookcloth, threatening the dominance of importation from Winterbottom. By the end of the decade, Interlaken Mills though dominant, was being undercut by local merchants with inferior quality bookcloth.
Rather than engaging in another damaging price war like that in England, Winterbottom decided to bring Interlaken Mills into his emerging syndicate. In 1890, he filed two patents in the US for bookbinders' cloth as the assignee on behalf of AW&S. Winterbottom then travelled to America and bought Interlaken Mills, in an apparently amicable takeover, which allowed Interlaken to continue trading under its own name with its own board of directors. Winterbottom himself became very friendly with Interlaken managers and their families (ibid.), visiting every two to three years from 1892 to 1913, accompanied by his wife Minnie in the early years, building a mutually beneficial relationship between British and US operations, which endured for eighty years, long after Winterbottom himself had died.
Winterbottom continued to grow and consolidate the business in Rhode Island, fending off competition in 1904 with record sales over the next ten years, earning him large sums of money. Twenty-two years after having taken over operations in America, Winterbottom booked passage with a group of friends to New York aboard Titanic but was delayed by business at home, forcing him to postpone his passage by a week. Winterbottom travelled to New York aboard Adriatic on 18 April 1912, three days after Titanic had gone down with the loss of 1,500 lives. Adriatic returned to Liverpool on the 2nd of May with some of the surviving crew and management of Titanic.
