Bendix Hallenstein

Bendix Hallenstein was born in Brunswick, Germany, in 1835, the youngest son of a Jewish merchant family. As a young man he spent five years in Manchester, working in a large shipping office, before following his two older brothers to the goldfields of Victoria in 1857. After five years running a general store with his brothers at Daylesford, Bendix moved to Invercargill in 1862. He established a general store but traded at a loss and after a year relocated to the bustling goldfield town of Queenstown. There the business prospered and Bendix rose to prominence in the district, serving first as Mayor, then as a Provincial Councillor and in 1872 as a Member of the House of Representatives.

In 1873 he moved to Dunedin. His business had grown through the 1860s and he had opened branches at Arrowtown, Cromwell and in Lawrence. He found it difficult, however, to supply his shops with clothing, particularly menswear suited to the hard working conditions of the goldfields. He therefore decided to make his own and duly set up New Zealand's first clothing factory in Customhouse Square, Dunedin. At first he had a manager to look after the factory but in 1875 he took charge himself. Retailers were resistant to locally produced garments, preferring the larger profit margin of imported items. Hallenstein countered their reluctance by opening his own retail outlet in the Octagon. He undercut the opposition by charging wholesale rates for individual items for the first year and business boomed.

By 1877 the factory was pouring out 1400 garments per week and distributing them through stock and station agencies and retailers in almost every Central Otago town. Prime sites were obtained for the company's own retail outlets in Christchurch, Timaru, Oamaru, Wellington and Greymouth. Bendix's older brother was by then living in London and they opened a London office to act for the New Zealand Clothing Company and Michaelis Hallenstein and Company of Melbourne.

The original factory quickly became too small and in 1883 a new factory and warehouse was erected in Dowling Street, designed by David Ross, one of the city's leading architects. By 1900 there were 34 shops across New Zealand with sites, managers and staff personally selected by Bendix. When Bendix died in 1905 Hallensteins was firmly established as a national chain of menswear stores with a solid reputation for quality and value.

During Hallenstein’s early days in Victoria, he had competed with his brothers for the hand of their young English housekeeper, Mary Mountain. She chose Bendix over his older brothers and the couple returned to England to be married in Mary’s parish church in Lincolnshire in 1861. They were to have four daughters, all of whom married within Dunedin’s important Jewish mercantile community.

These marital links with the Fels, De Beer, Hyams, and Brasch families made this a large and significant extended family. Its members were to be major benefactors of Dunedin’s cultural institutions, particularly the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and Otago Museum. Bendix Hallenstein meanwhile was the first Dunedin business leader to contribute to a building appeal for the Otago Early Settlers Association’s museum. He donated £50 and a letter of support to get the fundraising for this building under way in 1904.