In 1854, Oscar Wilde was born, The Age was founded, and a shoemaker opened in King Street whose customers would keep it going for the next 172 years.
When Jo McDougall’s great-great-grandfather James Molony opened the original Molony’s, he sold leather shoes to prospectors heading to the gold rush.
From these first handmade shoes, the shop started selling other items of clothing, ice skates and then eventually ski gear, retailing “everything but the snow”.
The Molony family helped develop the lifts at Falls Creek, and at its peak the business had stores at Mount Buller, Mount Hotham and Dinner Plain, before eventually scaling back to one Molony’s store run by Jo and Doug McDougall in South Yarra.
However, after 172 years of trading, the McDougalls are getting ready to close the doors at Molony’s for the last time.
“We’ve had a good run, and we’re happy with our decision to go, but it is the end of an era, it’s a long time,” Doug McDougall said. “Basically, we’re just retiring. I’ll be 71 this year, and we just don’t have anyone to pass it on to. Our children have got their own careers.”
McDougall says business has become tougher and the cost of everything is going up – including wages, freight, electricity and council rates.
The South Yarra store is packed with high-tech fabrics, boots with fur lining, waterproof outer shells and warm woollen jumpers.
Molony’s stocks a lot of imported ski gear, including top products from Europe and North America, but McDougall says many people just want cheaper copies now.
The family has seen many changes over the years including the rise in popularity of snowboarding in the late 1980s and early ’90s and the resurgence of skiing when the shorter style of skis started to become more popular.
Customers now often ski overseas in the summer holidays, so Molony’s is more of a year-round business than it once was.
“We have a lot of people buy equipment to go to the Antarctic, or they go to see the Northern Lights, so we specialise in good-quality gear,” McDougall said. “The funny thing is we still sell a lot of shoes, imported shoes from Italy and different snow-related shoes.”
Passion for the snow runs through the generations – Jo McDougall represented Australia at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria.
Old timber sleds, a pair of skis presented to the Australian runner Ron Clarke in 1956 by the Norwegian ski team and the skis McDougall used in 1976 are all on display.
“It’s just one of those things; when your time’s up, your time’s up,” McDougall said. “We’ve had great fun, and we’ve had good customers and a great lifestyle in the ski industry travelling and being involved in it.”
Regular customer Melissa McDonald said she had been shopping at Molony’s her whole life.
“I’m 55, and I love the snow and love skiing and love them,” she said. “I remember going to the original Molony’s store in the city with my parents as a little girl, and then wherever they were, I went – at Falls Creek and Dinner Plain.”
McDonald said there was nowhere else like Molony’s and its closure was going to be a real loss to Melbourne.
“They are very old-school retail. They really serve you and get to know you,” she said. “It’s a bit like [department store] Georges was – it’s a Melbourne institution, not just a shop.”
The McDougalls expect to close the store around July, once they have sold of all their stock.
Molony’s closing-down sale could match the advertisements placed in The Age by James Molony in 1887 for a “bona fide cheap sale” with prices on button kid gloves, tents and lace parasols “which defy comprehension”.
McDougall said once the doors were closed, the couple were looking forward to spending their retirement on Australia and Austria’s ski fields.
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