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In a less dramatic version of the same story, told by the company's "official" biographer, Michael Balfour, in Alfred Dunhill: One Hundred Years and More (1992) the date of the separation of Alfred and his brother Herbert from the automobile was 1905, with Alfred remaining a prominent shareholder through 1912.
In any case, in 1904 Alfred Dunhill applied for a patent on the product he later advertised as the Dunhill Patent Shield Pipe. The pipe could be smoked outdoors or indoors, because it prevented the tobacco from burning too hotly and kept the ash in the pipe. Copy from one 1906 magazine advertisement advises that this item is "...indispensable to the cyclist, sportsman, the yachtsman, the automobilist, the billiard enthusiast.... The shield, which is the feature of this pipe, prevents all inconvenience and danger of flying sparks or ash to the smoker and others when traveling buses, tram-cars, motor-cars, cycles, boats, etc...." With characteristic bravura, Dunhill's advertising copy claimed that the pipe was available from "all the leading tobacconists thoughout the world," not a small exaggeration.
Another magazine ad illustrates this unique invention: the forward half of the bowl rim which is raised like a permanent coat collar against the wind, is nonetheless carved of the same briar. Prices ranged from one shilling, six pence (38 cents) for the "Popular Quality," to the high-end item with a silver band and a hand-cut mouthpiece at five shillings, six pence ($1.38). Although the prices were in line with other briar pipes sold retail or mail order, this is put in perspective by noting that a shop assistant earned approximately ten shillings ($2.50) weekly in a West End quality shop.
In the years before World War I, the area in which Alfred Dunhill located his first tobacco shop in 1907 at 31A Duke Street was highly prestigious. Just south of Picadilly, Jermyn
Changes in personal taste could also be accommodated by simply adjusting the formula on demand. The blend formulas were recorded in a large logbook under the "My Mixture" rubric, and the blends individually numbered. Some of the more popular mixtures were eventually marketed as house blends, many still extant such as Standard Mixture, #965, Royal Yacht, No. 2 Flake, Nightcap, and others. Even amid today's hurried, mass-marketing ambience, the company still makes a custom blended "My Mixture" upon individual request.
But it is with the pipe itself that Dunhill first established his truly international reputations. Not satisfied with the overall quality of pipes bought from wholesalers and sold under the company name in his shop, Dunhill set out "to do it better" -- a repeated theme in his life, referred to by his children as "a Dunhill job." Dunhill sought to manufacture his own brand as a means of enhancing profits while gaining total "vertical" control over the pipe, from raw material to finished product.
By 1910, Dunhill had hired two master craftsman away from his friend Charatan, (later supplier of some top-of-the-line straight-grained bowls that Dunhill finished and branded as his own), to set up a small factory. By 1912, two Dunhill constants had been introduced: the disposable aluminum inner tube that acts as a rudimentary
In Our Family Business (1979), Mary Dunhill says that her father abandoned the "Dunhill's Motorities" business in 1902, and spent several subsequent years "running a patent office in Argyll Street.... [where] he turned his interests in gadgets and marketable ideas into a small but lucrative business.... And onto his desk one day came that all-important 'pipe with a windshield' which first turned his thoughts in the direction of the tobacco trade."
Street was the "shopping center" of the St. James district, an area known then (and now) for its fashionable shirtmakers, haberdashers, bootmakers, antiques and boutiques of all kinds. In later years, Dunhill would acquire the leases on properties that allowed expansion up to and then wrapping around the corner of Jermyn Street with room for corporate offices upstairs.
n the difficult and highly competitive retail environment of Edwardian England, Dunhill succeeded by creating the standards that still guide the company today. He made a line of products no one else had or could easily match, built customer loyalty by attentiveness to individual needs, and made a religion of personal service. By formulating a truly custom-blended mixture for the individual palate, Dunhill was providing a parallel service to that of the "bespoke" tailors of Savile Row, and thus could charge more: Once the smoker liked what Dunhill had tailor-made better than anything else available, he became a repeat customer for a long time.
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