PLAINTALK
I got to be a star with this company only because I knew Phil McCue from my
Burbank days.
I didn’t know it, but my good friend to be, Ken Dyball, was setting up a new company of his own, selling gifts to the card trade. He and a few others had been with the American company Russ Berrie and were looking to go on their own. I resisted to begin with, as I thought it was just the toy trade under another name. Phil was doing really well! For the first time, I was told that this gift trade I could join, was on the up & up! It was a miracle! Brilliant product that moved out of shops, a buoyant trade & for once I was in my element! It was just a range of impulse gifts, from gold plated key rings via Mr. Ruffles to large fluffy pink ducks. There was money around & boys had enough spare money to buy gifts, for their girlfriends, with their card purchase. The card & gift trade was ready for them. All bright & new. The items were so good to demonstrate, hard to resist and for once in my life, I created a turnover to match the Southern guys. This is what I had been waiting for! I had worked hard in the past to get nowhere. Now the hard work suited me, I couldn’t wait to get out & sell the stuff & at long last it was paying off.
I loved the people, the product and the structure. You earned money until your
costs had been covered & then you were on 10% commission. My god, it was manna
from heaven! Plus I got to choose my own car! I was in salesman’s heaven!
Life was sweet. Emma was a lovely little girl, Ian was up to his neck at collage studying computers & about to join Grantham’s as an Apple computer technician, Andrew was settled in Liverpool working in the bathroom trade and happily married to Andrea with a lovely & fit baby Joanne. Kath had gone to work for Auldene garden centre for “just 12 weeks” … ya right!
In the beginning, there was a boss with Ken that was very strange. Motivated by his own self-belief and not exactly integrated into the team, he was the only pimple on this perfect face. We all seemed to get on really well, everyone was a team player and we exchanged information by mail & phone. I elected to have a strange car by rep’s standards, so as a compromise, it was suggested I should run my three months probation & then I could chose. It was a pleasure, orders built up, the customer base expanded & we were going from strength to strength. I was soon driving a stunning Mitsubishi Gallant. One of the smoothest, quietest & most comfortable cars I had ever owned.
This would be around 1985/6. The live aid concert, led by Bob Geldof was big
news. Chernobyl had its nuclear accident. We all watched the Challenger shuttle
explode as it launched from Cape Canaveral.
I was getting into my stride with an Apple Mac computer & Ian was teaching me how to use it too! At long last, I was as organised as only computers can allow. They were like modern magic wands. I could never spell & I suddenly had no mistakes. Everything was organised, listed and arranged how I wanted it, my facts & figures were to hand instantly. I could use my artistic side to present my sales blad. (A book of words & pictures, all salesmen had, to present their information). I was able to keep track easier, change the order of anything. I wasn’t into email & the web yet but these were early days. The hard disks were small, the programs were compact, the memory was small & graphics cards were not necessary. A wonderful integrated Apple program was ClarisWorks. The whole thing was only took up 1k of hard disk space & was brilliantly simple, easy & effective. On one small program, I could word process, use spreadsheets, database all my records & create artwork! Beautifully written, it all integrated seamlessly. I could even tweak it to my personal requirements. For the first time in my life, I was a smart arse! The mobile phone was yet to become common but fax machines were getting to be fairly standard.
For my 50th birthday, Kath spent a fortune on a Panasonic VHS
video camera. It was the enormous sum of £1500! It was so huge and heavy that
it was designed to be used on the shoulder. So became the change over from Cine
film to video. We had hired a camera on a caravan holiday in Saudersfoot. I was
obviously that taken, that Kath thought it would make a perfect special birthday
present.
Things got so good, I was confident enough to buy a canal boat. It was a 22’ Dawncraft. It had a dreadful two-stroke engine that smoked like wildfire. No one else really enjoyed it and it was a bad choice nevertheless I re-christened it, Ruffles because I knew where the money was coming from! Things seemed to be getting better & better. Ken thought I was good enough to be on his management team, I remember being in an airport with him & he was talking about the future. He saw me becoming his National Sales Manager; he must have seen something no one else had spotted.
One day Ken rang and said he knew I was into television & film. A man was making
a TV program about all aspects of the heart & how it was central to the human
culture. He had spotted our product that was covered in hearts and wondered if
we would send down a salesman to be filmed about why hearts were so widely used
in cards & gifts. Oh Ken knew just the man! It was to be shown on Channel four I
think. Part of my spiel was shown in the trailer and I got my 30 seconds of
fame. It was a con job & I got slightly stitched up by the producer, but nothing
more than I deserved! The only other time I was on TV, had been for the local
people going round the Laurel & Hardy Museum in Ulverston. That was just fun! No
messages were being concocted on that kind of magazine clip. It was the late
Bill Cubin that founded the museum. I was on of the founder members of his “Sons
of the desert” fan club.