Miss Gladys Sym Choon
Clothing in Adelaide

The Pym coon family of South Australia were a triumphant middle class business family who were healthy known and highly regarded in the wider Adelaide community. Born the equivalent year in 1867, they were from peasant families, and married in 188 (aged 21) earlier tomorrow to Australia. When he had saved sufficient money, he brought his wife out. The couple had previous had a son in China, who died shortly after birth, and was replaced by an adopted son, as was the custom. The adopted son remained in the village with relatives all his life, and for many decades was supported by money sent from Adelaide by John Pym coon, and later by his younger son Gordon. At first he old to walk with a hand cart from his home in suburban Unley to the East Last Markets in the center of Adelaide, where he would purchase bear and sell it doortodoor in the suburbs. When business improved, he bought the premises. It was while he was tranquil in Unley that his wife came out to Australia, sometime prior 1900, and joined him in a house in Arthur Street. In 1908 the total family moved to bundle Street, where the youngest son Gordon was born in 1910. These families were mostly marketed gardeners, furniture makers and laundry workers. John Pym Coon was a diabetic, and due to cutting himself with a knife while preserving pickles, became ill, and sometime in the 1910s returned to China, later to expire there. The family business was then controlled by his wife So Hung Moon and her eldest son George. Gordian and Gladys are obvious to have also attended Adelaide High School. It was unusual for a young Australian woman in her day to get a lesser education, and even more unusual for a Chinese girl. At this time, John Pym coon had already returned to China, so it is speculated that without her husband to insist on traditional ways, So Hung Moon saw the opportunity to present her daughters the education necessary to enable them to be economically independent. While Dorothy only rented her shop, the other three ran their own businesses from their shops. The families creative store, lower the name of Pym coon and Company, continued to be ran by George. Gordian set up his own business further along the road called Gordon S. coon Nuts Ltd, which mainly sold fireworks and peanuts, but also sold items such as matches, syrup, pickled food (which he pickled himself), paper bags, other nuts, paper cups and ice cream cones. George sold a similar range of goods to Gordian, and so the two brothers were competitors who shrived to be independent of each other. These and other elaborate goods were imported from China through merchants and agents in Australia. Her chief interest was in arts, craft and needlework, and once a year she went to China, for business and for pleasure. Her beginning trip was with her mother, and they visited her mother’s home village, and occasionally, her sister Dorothy also traveled with her. When Gladys when to China for business purposes, she generally went to the Shanghai area, as this was the best store in the country to obtain papery, which was what Gladys mostly sold. Gladys was both the beginning woman in South Australia to form a business in her own correct and the beginning to import goods from overseas.