A Suitable Man

'In 1924, into the tiny town of Warrnambool, which then had a population of a fraction under 4000 people, there came a travelling salesman...' Australians of a certain generation all know Fletcher Jones - the stores, the clothing, the daggy dad slacks - but not many people know the extraordinary story of the man who founded the store. A Suitable Man tells the remarkable life and achievements of Fletcher Jones.

Many Australians know of Fletcher Jones - the stores, the clothing, the daggy dad slacks - but few know the extraordinary man behind it all. David Fletcher Jones was an autodidact, a wanderer and dreamer who became a visionary businessman and social entrepreneur.

His rise was unlikely. The stammering, motherless son of an impoverished Bendigo blacksmith, he left school at thirteen and ended WWI buried alive by a shell explosion in France. Despite the horrors of war, he never lost his humour, optimism or deep regard for people. After an epiphany in the veteran's dole queue, he decided to become master of his destiny. He began as a travelling salesman in the Western District before opening a tailor's shop. Business boomed. Later, he bought five acres outside Warrnambool for his factory and put a sign over the front: 'Fletcher Jones and Staff'. Because not only was Fletcher Jones revolutionising menswear with his ready-to-wear trousers, but remarkably, his manufacturing and retail empire was founded on profit-sharing and staff ownership.

His life is a fascinating reflection of Australia's twentieth century progress across social policy, immigration, manufacturing, the city and country divide, the rise and fall of wool. But most important, perhaps, is what we can learn from his fundamental human decency and his determination to run an enterprise for profit while seeking to do good at individual and societal levels. There are lessons for us all in a life like Fletcher's.

About the Author

Jock Serong is the author of Quota, winner of the 2015 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction; The Rules of Backyard Cricket, shortlisted for the 2017 Victorian Premier's Award for Fiction, finalist of the 2017 MWA Edgar Awards for Best Paperback Original, and finalist of the 2017 Indie Book Awards Adult Mystery Book of the Year; and On the Java Ridge, which won the Colin Roderick Award and, internationally, the inaugural Staunch Prize (UK), and was shortlisted for the 2018 Indie Awards.

He has won praise for his trilogy of historical novels Preservation; The Burning Island, which earned him the ARA Historical Novel Prize and the Historia Award for Historical Crime Fiction (France); and The Settlement, which was shortlisted for the Voss Prize and the ARA Historical Novel Prize. His most recent novel, Cherrywood, was shortlisted for both the 2025 Indie Book Awards and the 2025 ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year.