he was an active supporter of many Welsh organisations. He died of cancer in London on 27 March 1910 at the age of 62. Expansion and collapse Owen Owen opened a drapery shop at 121 London Road, Liverpool. Over the years the store expanded, but in the 1920s when the city's retail focus moved away from the London Road area, the Owen family lent the company the money to move to a better position on Clayton Square where a large purpose-built department store (originally designed as a luxury hotel) was erected. The company then purchased rival chain T J Hughes, after a visit by then chairman Duncan Norman and moved that firm's Liverpool store into the empty London Road premises. Owen Owen expanded by building a store in Coventry in 1937, which was bombed during World War II, and purchasing Frederick Matthews in Preston. After the war it continued to expand, purchasing G W Robinson Ltd in Canada during 1951, and adding other stores to the UK portfolio while the Coventry and Southampton store were rebuilt. A subsidiary company, Plumb (Contract Furnishers and Shopfitters) Ltd., was created from its own shopfitting department and had offices at Bishop Street, Coventry and Kempston Street, Liverpool. By 1979 the business operated 19 department stores branded either Owen Owen or under their original name but taglined as an Owen Owen store. It also operated three T J Hughes stores in the UK, and seven G W Robinson stores in Canada. In the 1980s the Owen family sold the business. G W Robinson was sold in 1982 to Canadian businessman Joseph Segal and John Levy, while T J Hughes was split off as a separate entity. In 1991 the firm purchased several Lewis's stores from administration (not to be confused with John Lewis) and was known briefly under the business name of 'Lewis's Owen Owen', before being taken over by Philip Green in 1994. In 1995 Green launched the brand Kid's HQ in four of his Lewis's and Owen Owen Stores. The company was then stripped of its assets, which included the closure of the flagship Liverpool branch of Owen Owen, and was cut from twelve stores to one, Lewis's of Liverpool, following the sale of many stores to other chains including Allders and Debenhams. In early 2005, Philip Green sold his stake in the business to David Thompson who began a new phase of