It is noteworthy for any shop to survive for a half a century, to have done so on the Alum Rock Road is a remarkable achievement, given all the changes in recent decades.
Yet Roja Stores has been present near the Saltley Gate end of Alum Rock Road since 1961. In fact the Rohman family has been running businesses in Birmingham since Mr Rojour Rohman entered the textile trade in 1948, running four large stalls in the old King’s Hall market. At the same time Mr Rohman opened one of the first Asian restaurants in Birmingham on Broad Street in the early 1950s, making him a double pioneer, an entrepreneur in both food and fashion.
He continued in the King’s Hall market until 1960 when the building of the first Bull Ring shopping centre forced a relocation.
In 1961 a store at Number 22 Alum Rock Road opened. Initially the name of the previous shop was kept – ‘Maurice’, a clothes store – as Mr Rohman became the first retailer of Asian fabrics on the Alum Rock Road. Business prospered and the present site of Number 24 and Number 26 was acquired.
As Mr Rohman’s son, Ahmed, now running the store with his sister Yasmin, recalls:
“Trade was good, he was open until ten o’clock at night. People were coming from Manchester, London, Leeds, all over the country, from Glasgow, just to buy the materials. So as he expanded the shops, Number 22 was kept as materials, this (Number 24) initially was all materials as well. Then Dad found there was a change in the area where people were coming in, Europeans, thinking they could buy European things, and they couldn’t, so he thought, well, I need to integrate that as well. He had the foresight to think, ‘Well, I’ll put Western clothing in, bring the curtains and nets back into it again’, soft furnishings.”
Today Number 24 Alum Rock Road survives, the longest established business on the road. Mindful of the saturated market in Asian textiles the store focuses on a selection of Western clothing and that same mixture of curtains, nets and blinds introduced thirty years ago.
As Ahmed Rohman remarks:
“It’s been a happy time here, we are well recognised by all members of the community. A lot of our long-established customers still return, some of whom date back to King’s Hall market. We’ve seen the changes on the road over the years and hopefully we can be here for many more years to come”.
