Page 222 - Bulletin 9 2005

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When the Tramway Company, the holding company of Cape Marine Suburbs, became
insolvent, he seized the opportunity this presented for turning the sandy waste into one

of the loveliest spots in the Peninsula and bought the shares of the Company. He bought
the whole of Camps Bay from the beach to the pipe track excluding the few existing

private properties. He bought what Benjamin Bennett described as "This never-never

land, ill-advisedly dubbed by some ‘Cohen's Folly.'"

Isidore Cohen was not fazed by the criticism and the mockery. He had long ago learnt to
rely on his own judgment and perseverance. When he was only sixteen he had left

Wecksna, Lithuania to go to South Africa without funds or knowledge of the language.
However, he did have two older brothers here, Louis, who had arrived in the 1880s and

David, who had arrived in 1899. As Isidore had been born on 23 January 1894, he had

never seen his brother Louis before. Louis had opened a furniture shop in Cape Town
and David worked for him.

Isidore found South Africa in 1910 to be a country full of opportunities for an
enterprising and hard working young man. There were few openings in the large cities

so the teenager started peddling and settled in the Orange Free State where he too
opened a furniture shop. He realized that many people had little ready cash, but needed

furniture, so he instituted the system of hire purchase, selling as far afield as Natal.

A competitor, Aaron Beare, said: “He was one of the first men in South Africa to sell on

credit - and I thought as a young man that he must come a cropper. He was selling
furniture from Cape Town....and (would) pay the railage and it would arrive here in

your home and you would pay on instalments. And we all thought in the ‘20s, ‘This
man is mad,’ because people were not paying. He was one of the first men in the

country to start hire-purchase - without a deposit or nominal deposit. But he was a good
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psychologist because he realised that most people are honest.”

Isidore Cohen's idea worked so well that he eventually took over his brothers' shop and
became the proprietor of the Colonial Furnishing Company in Long Street, Cape Town,