Founding a Travelling Menagerie

It is perhaps worth considering the menagerie that George Wombwell established just after the turn of the nineteenth century from a contemporary business perspective. The model he was developing, when broken down into its component parts, would look something like the following:

a)     Source and purchase exotic, fascinating animals from different parts of the known world, with an emphasis on the large, fierce and dangerous.
b) Establish the conditions in which such animals can be kept alive and healthy, including the diet and general care that will be required to justify the investment.
c) Find and establish premises that can be used when the animals are disembarked or purchased, and holding premises and pastures where they can be safely kept when not travelling.
d) Source the foods required to keep the animals healthy and maintain an ongoing efficient flow.
e) Set up transportation mechanisms and accompanying logistical support including food and accommodation to enable the menagerie to travel across the United Kingdom.
f) Train and upskill workers to look after the animals, train them, and subsequently work with them to put on shows that will attract paying customers.
g) Advertise and market the enterprise so as to command enough interest to make the venture profitable.
h) Reinvest and expand.

Picture of George Wombwell from:
http://thegreenockian.blogspot.com.cy/2015/07/greenock-fair.html

In today’s terms, this plan might be identified as resting on a dangerously extended supply chain and as an astonishingly high risk venture, particularly given that the founder’s start-up skills rested on no visible capital base, and extant knowledge only of domestic animal husbandry in the county of Essex. 

Had George been applying for bank loans or young entrepreneur grants, one can well imagine the raised eyebrows that such a business plan would provoke, for all his protestations that what he was proposing constituted a genuine niche business opportunity. 

Somehow though, George Wombwell had, as has been suggested, an instinctive grasp of the business cycle, and possessed the agility and flexibility required to continually to react to circumstances in an uncertain market and time and turn them to his advantage. The story of the Wombwell menagerie is, apart from anything else, one of the more extraordinary business stories of the nineteenth century.