"Tributes to 'shrewd' business-and family-man Roy Palin"

[dutchman]

He ran Roy Palin's Menswear, with stores in Cheylesmore, Radford and Kenilworth, for more than 30 years



Tributes have been paid to a menswear store owner who embraced Coventry as his adopted city.

Roy Palin ran his business in Coventry, with stores in Cheylesmore, Radford and Kenilworth for 36 years and will be fondly remembered by many people.

He died on Wednesday, December 30.

Daughter Samantha said her father’s passion was talking to and helping customers on the shop floor, which he continued to do even as a store owner.

He featured in the Coventry Telegraph many times throughout his career but his claim to fame was kitting out the players of Coventry City Football Club in 1987, the year they won the FA Cup.

Born in Derby in 1942, Mr Palin left school aged 15 and went straight to work in a shop called Frank A Townsend Ltd.

Samantha explained how her father had taken the first job he was offered ‘as that’s what you did in those days’. But luckily, he ended up loving the role and stayed there for seven years.

He worked for a spell at Hector Powe, the Regent Street tailor who specialised in producing officers’ uniforms in the Second World War at the Bull Ring in Birmingham.

It was here he met his first wife and Samantha’s mum Angelina at a town hall dance. It was a whirlwind romance, with Roy and Angelina, who was working as a hairdresser, meeting in November 1964 and getting engaged by Christmas.

Work saw Mr Palin take up a management position with Foster Brothers in Farnborough, and then Coventry, but as he rose through the ranks he found he was spending less time on the shop floor with the customers that he loved.

“He had talked about owning his own business,” Samantha said. “What he loved was being on the shop floor with the customers and his colleagues, he didn’t want to be on the road all the time.”

Angelina’s parents helped with the finance and Mr Palin set up his first store, Roy Palin’s Menswear, on Quinton Parade in Cheylesmore.

“They had so little stock at first that my dad would bring his own clothes in to hang on the rail,” Samantha said.

Three years later a second shop opened on Jubilee Crescent in Radford, followed by a third in Kenilworth in the early 1980s.

There was also a suit hire store in Quinton Parade, separate to his original shop.

“Everyone was wearing suits in those days,” Samantha said. “Dad always said it was the suit centre that kept them going, because in the recession it was the only thing men were buying.”

In 1980 Mr Palin and Angelina divorced and he later found happiness again with his second wife Jean, a primary school teacher who went on to manage one of the stores.

Mr Palin was incredibly proud of his business empire, and would take out double page spreads in the Coventry Telegraph. He also featured in a story for treating St George’s Day as a bank holiday and giving his staff the day off.

But his proudest moment came in 1987.

“All of the Coventry City players came to get kitted out in suits and blazers,” Samantha said.

And he was keen to give something back to his community, sponsoring youth football teams and other charity work.

Samantha added: “He often spoke about building a sense of community. When my parents moved to Coventry the intention was never to stay but it was the city he chose to start his business. He very much became a Coventry businessman.”

After running his own stores for 34 years and an incredible 53-year career in the menswear trade, Mr Palin retired in 2010 aged 67.

In a Coventry Telegraph article about his retirement he spoke of his plans to read more, travel and spend time with his family.

But tragedy struck and five years later he was diagnosed with Alzheimers.

He died in December 2020 aged 78 and is survived by Samantha and her brother James, Mr Palin’s stepsons and –daughter Philip, Steven and Suzanne, grandchildren Thomas, Katy, Alice and Christopher and great-grandchildren Casey and Owen.