Post-war Expansion
After the war Thorntons considered further expansion. An application for a building licence to extend the Sheffield factory on its quarry site was refused because of the very great shortage of building materials and skilled labour. One of the brothers saw an advertisement in a local paper offering a factory in a place called Belper in Derbyshire about 35 miles (56 km) to the south. They successfully acquired the building in 1948 for £8,400 but signally failed to notice that Belper had the lowest rate of unemployment in the country.
Norman had three sons, Tony born in 1927, Peter in 1933 and John in 1943. Stanley had one son, Michael born in 1936. Tony Thornton joined the business in 1948 and initially worked at the factory in Belper, after about 5 years he began to take over retail management from his father, Norman. Peter joined in 1953 working also at the Belper factory in the vacations from the London Borough Polytechnic where he was studying Chocolate and Sugar Confectionery. He finished the course in 1954 and then joined the business full-time.
By this time the company had established strong differential advantages over competitors, they were: rigid rules for the products and for running the retail business which were always followed at each new retail location, the Special Toffee product, writing names on Easter Eggs and a fourth advantage was about to be created, this was the Continental Chocolates range.
In early 1954, Walter Willen, a young Swiss confectioner, came to work for Thorntons. He came originally just to learn English, possibly to stay for a year and then go home. Fortunately for Thorntons he remained until his retirement. Walter set to creating a new range of handmade confectionery called Swiss Assortment. Such beautiful pieces, round spiky milk and plain chocolates, slices with layers of nut paste, pineapple fourée and everything else. Eventually the name changed to the Continental Assortment because the Swiss Embassy complained. Stanley Thornton worked closely with Walter during this period so that the recipes could be adapted more to the English taste.
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