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STEPPING BACK IN TIME


AN INDEPENDENT REMEMBERS PART 50


As his article series reaches a landmark big 5-0, our independent DIY retailer sends a message to his younger self with some advice which could saved him a lot of time and energy spent learning the hard way.


I


t was 1985 and as usual I was on the lookout for new stuff


to sell. It’s


often occurred to me that, had I been


able to go back in time with the knowledge I later acquired, then life could have been much easier. So, armed with this supernatural ability to travel back in time and take my younger self to one side for a chat about the facts of life, what fruity nuggets of information might I impart to a young shopkeeper?


Talking to oneself


The first thing I’d say is, “everything’s gonna be fine – I have a time machine!” But that sounds all too easy and doesn’t allow for the fact that some lessons in life are better learnt the hard way. Yes, I remember there were times when I wished that I could get out of being a retailer, and whilst time- travelling I would be careful not to offer myself the drop-and-run option. Why? Because there were great chunks of my career as a purveyor of domestic maintenance merchandise that I truly enjoyed and, mindful of this, I wouldn’t want to deprive myself of all of that great fun. I’m not afraid of admitting that I did enjoy some of it. What else? I would advise stocking a wide range of light bulbs much earlier than we actually did. Watch out for Woolworths closing down so we could grab their bigger premises. Earlier specialisation in reconditioned vacuum cleaners would enable us to suck up the competition. I would advise against buying that bloody second-hand Green’s


petrol lawnmower. And


telling the boss not to accept cheques with no bank guarantee card would save us a hefty few quid. There, that handful of tips would make us money and also save us from losing some of it. Oh yes, and don’t open a business account with TSB, certainly not in the mid-80s; they didn’t have a clue.


24 DIY WEEK JANUARY 2021


convert themselves. I used to tell customers that whilst we were allowed to sell the masters, they were not supposed to fit them. This only worked in our favour.


Ringing the bells


Ringing some changes We entered the telephone market in 1985. I had noticed that for a year or two British Telecom had been installing new phone lines using sockets so that new phones could be plugged and unplugged instead of being hard-wired. This was the beginning of the new system that we have today. It didn’t take long for low-cost imports of telephone handsets from China to begin flooding the market. Word soon spread


about the


availability of extension sockets that could be DIY-fitted and enable up to four telephones to work on just one line, and soon we were turning away customers because we didn’t have any of this new space-age stuff in stock. And then I saw a full- page advert in DIY Week for a free display stand and a load of mouth- watering goodies to enable this new era of phone freedom. I made the call and the rep just happened to be close by and was with us by closing time. Maybe he had one of the early mobile phones; I don’t know, but the timing was about


“I’m not afraid of admitting that I did enjoy some of it.”


right for that technology. Even now I can remember writing the cheque for him and within a couple of days we had this massive display of telephone equipment taking pride of place in the centre of our power tools window. Within a week the stand was looking as if the crows had been at it, picking the stock to the bone and leaving a skeleton of empty hooks.


By this time BT was also selling its own extension socket kits, but ours had the edge when it came to instructions and presentation. We also sold master sockets. Now, technically, people were not allowed to fit these to their phone lines, but BT had come up with some ridiculous fee for doing this work and so some screwdriver- wielding hobbyists decided


to


And then people began bringing us their bog-standard telephones – the ones with the bells inside – for conversion so they could also be used with the new socket system. Thanks to one of our customers having photocopied a page from a BT manual, we soon discovered how to provide a conversion service, which included the fitting of a resistor, thus giving a new lease of life to the traditional bog-standard phones with the loud bells. Not everyone liked the soft, chirrupy warble of the new ones. Someone even brought in a 1920’s candlestick telephone to be upgraded. And then we were inundated with a batch of European handsets from the other side of the Berlin wall, all brought in by different people. I’ve no idea where or how they found their way to us, though I checked every one of them for hidden bugs. Our supplier


also did a huge


range of phones, many of them novelties, and over the next few years we had Doctor Who’s TARDIS, a Batmobile, Garfield the cat, and some old mouse thing from Hollywood. None of these was what I would describe as a reasonable price, despite every one if them being made to poor specs in the Far East, and I remember one Christmas Eve when we could have sold well over 20 Garfield telephones, but I had messed up during ordering and we missed out on these extra sales. This wasn’t as bad as it sounds, because after Christmas


we


learnt that every one of them had been manufactured with a fault. By not having them in stock we disappointed a lot of customers, but at least we were spared their wrath when it came time to return them. Sometimes we don’t need a heads- up from the future.


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