AN INDEPENDENT REMEMBERS AN INDEPEND


AN INDEPENDENT REMEMBERS RS


“We wer


nder many


the same at”


re


when my boss, an ex-navy joiner set up as a one-man-bander were now poised on the


project


une 1982: new summer, new shop,r,, ne new opportunities . After 35 years on those premises, from the time y joiner r,, we


r,,


a new business empire. I dr eamed about employing


with dedicated buyers, publicity specialists,


department managers, managers for the managers, cleaners, drivers, a fleet of delivery vans. Hell, we might even need to build separate toilets for men and women! Our str eet footprint mightn’t have been huge, but who knew exactly how far we could expand upwar ds? I ower here we


mean, Post Office To Wa


dif ferent. Ye Tower


come! as this what they mWas this what they meant by “the sky’s the limit”?


Our r eality was somewhat Yeah, we had lo


eah, we had lots more


space, thr ee large display windows, a good town centre position, lots of passing trade, two utilities and a Post Of fice - all within spitting distance of our entrance. But now we had competition from an unexpected, and rather aggressive, sour ce. The half-page advert in the local paper from the very same pair that had warned of their coming was something of a shock. Their quoted remarks wer e brash, loud- mouthed, cocky, and the more I r ead the piece, the more I could see our plans fast disappearing down the swill pit at the Gr otty Sark pub across the road.


y,, and the The annoying thing about them www.diyweek.net


brink of staff,


managers, re


boat” J


as sa Big dreams, big new signage and, unfortunately ly, ly, big-mouthed


competition... but still a reassuring feeling that he’s not alone, as our independent takes a step back in time with part 26 of his stories from the shop floor . wasn’t only the sizes of their mouths,


but also the size of their money- pit. Bespoke logos, special of big stock-holding, lar ge-ticket stock items … it all smacked of multiple- stores strategy, buy,, but applied to an independent. It was as frightening spotting Dracula’s


s, special off ffers, red eye s


across the collapsing tombstones and realising your stake just wasn’t big enough. And, with our luck, our mallet would be an imported one with a dodgy head. It felt like it was only a matter of time and our days were number ed.


Fair y godmother


I hand-made the shop sign, all 40-odd feet of it, painted on white- faced har dboar d and mounted on 9mm exterior plywood (which is still ther e, 37 years later – the ply that is). I don’t remember when the boss and I got it fastened up but, having to work on two ladders, we must have done this one evening with the shop closed and the str eet quiet. And we must have chosen one of the few times when the sea br eeze wasn’t gusting up our str eet or we’d have taken of


s later – the ply y,, en off like a pair ff


of hapless hang gliders. I’d always wanted to see the town fr om above, but I think it was safer to wait for Google Earth.


The letters, painted in r ed Humbrol enamel, were styled on a modern font that I found in a


used for the of


Letraset catalogue, which I also the official


ff letter heads.


Continuing this branding on our NOR pricing gun labels looked like ther e’d be pr oblems, as it wasn’t your plain old bog-standard style. However , the local lady rep said she’d see what she could do. Then, lo and behold, a few days later a hundred thousand beautifully- printed yellow price labels arrived, bearing our distinctive font and – I’ll come back to this another time – they wer e peelable, as r equested. I must have been ahead of my time, wanting such things. I never saw her again but, so far as I was concerned, she was something of a fairy godmother . Something as small and insignificant as a designer price label gave us a sense of pride and I’m certain the underlying vibrations were passed on to our public. I should still have her business card somewhere. Hmm, it’s just occurred to me that I had some sense of branding long before it beca me a widely-used concept outside of corporate entities. Maybe I was psychic. If only the National Lottery had been in go back then…


r,, Shot in the arm


I’ve already paid tribute to the various reps who descended upon us every month, and how useful – essential – they wer e, being one of only two means of contact we


Tr by Benn’s in T


Hardware Trade Journal publish y Benn’s in Tonbridge. At some point it became the very magazine you are reading now. I eag erl y awaited every issue, desperate to catch up with the latest news, and especially the back page occupied by One Man’s W


had with the r est of the trade. The other was the weekly magazine rade Journal published To


y One Man’s Week – written by a retailer – who, a little later , wasr,, w joined by The Other Man, because One Man didn’t have time to write every article.


We


Like a life-saving shot in the arm, these two blokes wer e like friends to me; we wer e in the same boat, if sailing in dif fer ent waters, and the feeling of knowing that my boss and I wer e not alone – and indeed shared similar mishaps, issues and stiff competition – meant so much to us. Although they were never identified, it was obvious they had lar ge shops, something I had aspired to, and so finally I could feel to be on equal terms, although their experience far outweighed mine, thus I absorbed every word. So it was thanks to DIYWe feel


W eek that I didn’t eek that I did


so isolated, and I’m certai n other r etailers will have shared my view . I wonder if the publisher ever realised how therapeutic those back- page articles wer e, and how they undoubtedly added extra mileage to some shops that had been on the points of thr owing in the tr owel.


20 JULY 2018 DIY WEEK 19


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