AN INDEPENDENT REMEMBERS
“We were on top of the game”
State-of-the-art security skills, staying loyal to reps and how helping out a customer in need can really pay off. Our independent hardware retailer takes a step back in time with part 22 of his stories from the shop floor
making occasional W of
e were passionate about what we sold, which I
became
incr easingly aware of when trips
to the
supermarket. To the staff there, stuff was merely stock that meant nothing to them. They turned up for work, shifted it around, watched it get sold, and it didn’t matter to them if it didn’t work, if it tasted sour or even if it was just plain off. Whereas the essence of working in an independent hardware store, where almost everything we supplied required a personal exchange
words (mostly
delivered in a polite manner), there was a degree of involvement with the customers and it felt natural to want their dropping door, dripping ballcock or shattered groyne (at the seaside, that is) to be fixed and allow their lives to return to normal. Yeah, we wanted people to be happy. If we made their lives easier, then they were more likely to remember us the next time they wanted to stop the drip, fill the chip, ease the door, mop the floor,
buy some glues, fix the fuse, clean the ooze, get some screws. Looking back, I suppose we felt
responsible for the success of their tasks at hand. You didn’t get that level of care and commitment at Tesco.
Prepping and repping I knew that once we’d expanded the shop, our 20 suppliers would increase in number. As it was, the boss reckoned to dislike reps taking up our time, though I’m certain he appreciated how useful they were when it came to knowledge – and not only about their own products, but also other people’s and what else was happening in the trade. This was invaluable stuff, and I seemed to spend more and more time chatting with them and making notes about new lines we could take on and where they could be sourced. On occasion, I did feel embarrassed when a rep got my interest and, usually due to price or delivery options, I chose to buy from another supplier; one that hadn’t actively sought my business in the first place. So, to make it up to them I’d take on another of their lines. I wonder if the multiples are loyal to
reps... I shouldn’t think so. Dream machine
This was early-1982 and in an effort to begin expanding our range of services in view of the impending larger shop, we bought what was then regarded as serious
capital
investment – an automatic cylinder key-cutting machine. You clamped in the original key, fitted the blank in place, pushed a button and the unit simply took over. Okay, so we still had to file away the metal fruzzings, but compared with the old post-war model that was hand-cranked (and to which the boss had attached a cannibalised motor from a Hoover Junior vacuum cleaner), we felt that we had well and truly landed in the space age. I’ve mentioned this old machine in a previous article, and don’t mean to sweep over old ground, but we forked out for this state-of-the-art piece of kit because it also cut car keys – and double-sided ones.
I
mean, wow! Since I’d been working there, the number of lost sales through turning down requests for car keys must have run to hundreds of pounds, and now we were on top of the game. Or so it felt. I put the key blank boards in the window to show the depth of our stock and that we also did foreign cars – even Wartburgs, if anyone still remembers what they looked like. If not, think of a shoe box with side doors and some tasteful styling from behind the iron curtain and you’ll get some idea. The ones with sun roofs were often mistaken for a skip.
Locks and smocks
This display acted as some sort of switch and suddenly we were inundated by people wanting us to break into their homes for them. The boss could pick a genuine Yale cylinder, whereas picking an imported Bird or Wren brand was
18 DIY WEEK 23 MARCH 2018
about as far as I got, showing the difference in quality really wasn’t sales hype put about by Yale. But we turned down requests to aid those who’d locked themselves out because the local locksmiths were intensely possessive of their patch, making it a closed shop. Well, they’d have wanted to close our shop, that’s for certain.
The point was that these people didn’t
actually pick locks: they
drilled them. That way they could sell the customer a new one. However, after one foul-mouthed exchange with a so-called expert (and I hasten to add that the scrap yard language didn’t emanate from me or the boss), there was one commission that he felt we should undertake, just to show those drill- wielding lock-wreckers that they couldn’t have it all their own way. It was a gents’ outfitters and the shop door had a Yale cylinder (okay, so it was actually more secure than it sounds because it also had a 5-lever Chubb for night time), and the manager had nipped out and flipped the Yale, but without his key. He returned to find three customers waiting, and they weren’t best pleased, especially when their
trousers were locked
inside. When they threatened to report him to the head office, he shot round to us. Well, I say “us”, when in fact he had some sort of quiet – nay, secretive, almost Masonic lodge-like – word with the boss. Er, my boss wasn’t a member, by the way, but for a moment I truly believed he might be. So, the boss got the trouser man
reinstalled in his shop. When it came time to pay, he seemed to be planting – despite protestations – many folded bank notes in all of the boss’ smock pockets, as if he couldn’t reward him enough. It was like a blur and I can see it now, the neck-end of 40 years later.
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