by Sugar, Alan
So to sum myself up in the eyes of Johnnie and Rita:
a) I couldn’t doven (recite Jewish prayers) from scratch, nor did I read Hebrew or observe the Jewish religion.
b) I was not a university graduate destined to become ‘my son, the lawyer’, ‘the doctor’ or ‘the accountant’.
c) I spoke with a very broad East End accent.
Unfortunately, what I didn’t understand at the time was that poor Ann had been put under extreme pressure to ditch me by her domineering father. So much so, it drove her to write me the Dear John letter.
Twenty years later, a Financial Times journalist wrote a book on me and made reference to a certain Gulu Lalvani (I’ll tell you about him later) who said, Ann’s father never wanted Alan – he wasn’t good enough for them.’ This infuriated Johnnie. At first he denied the accusation, but when I reminded him about Ann’s letter, he blustered, ‘Well, you just wait till your daughter is grown up – see what you’re like.’ I think the point he was making was that he just wanted the best for his daughter. Fair comment, I guess.
That Thursday night, after receiving the letter, I met up with my pals and discussed the situation. To be honest, they weren’t interested. Some of them felt that it was just a girlfriend. So what? It’s over. I don’t think any of them really understood how upset I was. So I just shut up about it.
On Friday, I found it very hard to concentrate. Despite trying to sleep it off and think positive, move on, all those clichés, I didn’t have a good day. As it was the end of the week, I went back to the office and had my samples counted by Peter Henson to check that they tallied with the previous week’s count. I was very short on words. Mr Henson Senior was doing his usual uncomplimentary summary of my week’s work. I just wanted to get out and go home. I called to Peter, ‘Right, would you check this lot of stuff here.’
On counting my samples, Peter said there was a set of walkie-talkies missing – I had no idea why. In fact, the walkie-talkie sets were now totally out of stock, so there was no reason why I should have a sample. Nevertheless, in theory, the set should have been there. Peter asked, ‘Well? Where has it gone?’
And at that point I exploded and started effing and blinding, swearing at him, telling him what a prick he was. ‘I’ve no idea where it is,’ I yelled. And I don’t like being treated as if I’m a thief And then, unbelievably, I burst into tears of frustration.
The guy must have thought, ‘Bloody hell, I only asked where the walkie-talkies are!’ He started to get a bit worried.
‘What’s the matter with you, Alan? What are you crying for?’
Obviously this pent-up depression over breaking up with Ann had been buried inside me. I’d hardly spoken a word to my mum and dad on the Thursday or the Friday; in fact, I’d hardly spoken to anybody, since my mates weren’t interested. Come Friday afternoon, Peter Henson must have pushed the wrong button.
‘Calm down,’ he said, ‘calm down. What’s the matter with you? Is there something else wrong?’
I was on my way out, so I turned to him and said, ‘Look, I just want to go home. Is that okay?’
He followed me, saying, ‘Don’t drive in this state. There must be something wrong. Come inside and sit down.’
Henson Senior rallied round as well. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Nothing, nothing,’ I said. ‘Just a bit of aggravation, that’s all.’
‘Where? Here?’
‘No, no, at home. Don’t worry, it’s all right, I’m okay.’
The storeman joined in, thinking my outburst was about the missing walkie-talkies, and said, ‘Here, Alan, I’ve worked it out. After you brought your box in last Friday, Peter was looking for a set of walkie-talkies, so he actually took the set himself and flogged it. I told Peter and he remembers this now, so he knows you didn’t nick it.’
I was thankful to him for sticking up for me. He knew better than anyone else that if I’d wanted to pinch anything from that organisation, it would have been dead easy to do it as I walked up and down the aisles of the warehouse past loads of stuff on the racks. As he put it, ‘You wouldn’t be nicking a walkie-talkie set when you could walk out with a load of gold Mudu ladies’ watches if you wanted.’
I finally went home. That night I met the lads and we all agreed that tomorrow we’d go out to the Whisky A Go Go club.
Although Steve and Sandra had met a while ago, they weren’t an official couple yet. Steve still felt he was a free agent, although I’m not sure Sandra did. So when we turned up at the Whisky A Go Go on Saturday, it wasn’t surprising to see Sandra there, loitering with intent. What was surprising was to see Ann. Head down, I weaved my way to the other side of the room with the lads and just let the evening take its course.
At some point, Sandra came up to me and said, Ann’s very upset and she’s sorry for what she did on Thursday. She’d really like to get back together with you.’
I told Sandra, ‘Well, that’s heart-warming, but it would be better if the message came from her.’ Ten minutes later, another of Ann’s friends came up to me with the same message and I sent her off with the same reply.
Knowing Ann’s nature as I do now, I can understand how tough the next move was for her. Eventually, she came over, apologised, slung her arms around me and said, ‘I’ll never do that again. That’s it. If we ever break up, it’ll be you that does it.’
I was in a bit of a daze, to be quite honest. What had I done to deserve that treatment on Thursday? And now what had I done to deserve this treatment on Saturday?
I wasn’t bargain of the century, so when I think back, considering the amount of pressure she was under from her parents and considering she was a lovely looking girl, sought after by many other fellows, I can’t see what the bloody hell made her so determined to stick with me. She could have had a prospective doctor, lawyer or accountant, and she’d have made her father happy. To this day, I still wonder at her determination and courage in sticking with me.
Even braver was her next move. At the end of the evening, she asked me to take her home. At this point, I didn’t know that Johnnie had been putting pressure on Ann to ditch me, so I walked into the lion’s den, cocky as you like. You can imagine the looks I got.
‘Hello, Alan, I’m surprised to see you here,’ said Rita, as she glared meaningfully at Ann.
‘Really? Why are you surprised to see me?’
‘Just surprised to see you here’, she said, continuing to glare.
Ann’s grandfather, Izzy, was sitting with Johnnie watching football on TV. ‘Who’s playing?’ I asked.
‘Who knows?’ came from Johnnie, as if to say, ‘Why are you asking me about football?
*
The following Monday, with my personal life sorted, with all the troubles of the world off my shoulders and with new fire in my belly, I was out selling again.
Peter Henson was still apologetic, not understanding what had gone on the previous Friday. Are you all right, Alan? Everything okay?’
‘Everything’s fine, Peter. Sorry about Friday. Right, anything new in this week? Anything I should know about?’
‘Yes, actually, we’ve got some high-intensity lamps coming in. Take one of these samples.’
I couldn’t resist rubbing it in. ‘Can you write that down, Peter, only I think when you took the walkie-talkie out of my samples box a couple of Fridays ago, you might have forgotten about it.’
‘Yes, I realise that,’ he said, knowing exactly what I was playing at.
Earlier I mentioned Henson Senior’s Scrooge-like manner. As I continued to work for him, my thoughts increasingly ran along the lines of: ‘Here I am riding around selling this stuff, which basically is purchased from third parties. On some occasions I do all the donkey work – picking up the boxes from the importer, delivering them to the customer, collecting the money. And I don’t even get thanked for it. I get my wages of twenty quid a week clear and a bit of commission here and there, but that’s it.’
Once again, let me un
derline the fact that £20 per week plus, say, £5 commission and another £10–15 from my sidelines, such as selling TVs, meant that I was earning £35–40 a week clear. That was a hell of a lot of money in 1966–7, without a question of a doubt. Nowadays, forty years later, it is, perhaps, the equivalent of someone earning £2,000 a week. Consider that a packet of twenty cigarettes was half a crown (12Vip), as was a gallon of petrol (3p per litre in today’s money).
Some weeks my TV sideline brought in as much as £30–40, but one couldn’t guarantee the consistency of these windfalls, as some weeks I’d hardly sell any. Nevertheless, selling something for myself that brought in £30–40 made the £20 I got for working five days a week, on the road, reporting to a boss, look stupid. And then, when I remembered the £80 I’d made for Henson in a single day . . . well, that tipped the scales.
One Friday night, I came home and I said to the family, ‘I’m going to start working for myself. I told Henson today that I’m leaving.’
Henson wasn’t actually upset. He said, ‘Fair enough, if you want to go, it’s up to you. What are you going to do?’
I said, ‘I might work for myself.’
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘But let me tell you, you haven’t got very good contacts.’ Always full of encouragement.
My father looked at me as if I were mad. ‘What do you mean, you’re going to work for yourself ? Who is going to pay you on Friday?’
That was an expression I’ll never forget, and it really sums up his whole outlook on work and life: ‘Who is going to pay you on Friday?’
I told him that I was going to pay myself on Friday.
Fortunately, Daphne, Shirley and the two Harolds were there at the time. Being of a different generation from my mum and dad, they were smiling enthusiastically, really encouraging me. I tried to reassure my dad that the profitability of my sidelines proved I had nothing to lose by going it alone – and I think it sunk in.
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘Well, I’m going to get down to the Post Office and take out a hundred pounds. I’ve seen a second-hand minivan in the garage over the road for fifty quid. I’ve already made enquiries and found out that it’s eight pounds for third party, fire and theft insurance. And with the rest of the money, I’m going to buy a bit of gear to sell and get on my way.’
Shirley’s Harold pointed out to me that I needed to get a National Insurance card and buy a National Insurance stamp once a week. That was another item on my list of chores.
The following day, I sprang into action. I withdrew £100 from my Post Office account, bought the van and took out the insurance.
And then, a really nice thought from Shirley. I received a telegram on Monday, which was unusual. Normally people sent them if they were congratulating someone on a wedding or needed to relay important news, such as a death. Shirley’s telegram said, ‘GOOD LUCK ALAN IN YOUR NEW BUSINESS.’ It’s a pity I didn’t keep it.
I set off in the minivan to Percy Street, just off Tottenham Court Road, and walked into the premises of the first supplier to A M S Trading Company, my new company. Many of the big importers in the marketplace used to name their companies after themselves, but I thought Sugar Trading wouldn’t have gone down too well, so I decided upon A M S Trading, which stood for Alan Michael Sugar.
I didn’t form a limited company. Effectively, it was Alan Sugar trading as A M S Trading Company. I never had any printed letter-headings or order books, simply a blue carbon-paper book with ‘INVOICE’ printed at the top of each page. I knew I’d have to order a rubber stamp or something like that sometime in the future.
At the supplier’s, I was greeted by a Mr Ronnie Marks, who didn’t know me from Adam. He was standing behind his trade counter. ‘Hello, how are you?’ he said, as if he’d known me for years. This was part of Ronnie’s charm – he made you feel comfortable.
To cut a long story short, I bought about forty quid’s worth of car aerials off him, which ate up the balance of my £100. Car aerials, I’d learned from my Henson days, were quite an easy sale. These ones were modern and fully retractable. At the time, most car aerials were fixed – you couldn’t push them down into the body of the car – but now, for some reason, people were changing their car aerials over to fully retractable ones.
No one, including myself, ever imagined I would succeed in the electrical business in the manner I have. When industry people started talking about me, suddenly everyone claimed to be the one that started me off. One such person was Gulu Lalvani (more about him shortly). So let me officially go on record and say this: no one actually started me off as such because no one gave me any merchandise on credit. But it is true to say that my very first supplier greeted me cheerfully, treated me decently and sold me some car aerials – and that gentleman was Mr Ronnie Marks. There you go. That’s the start-off story, like the beetroot story, all officially logged.
My first customer was P. W. Thaxton of East India Dock Road, who bought six car aerials. I had known this customer from my days with Robuck and Henson. P. W. Thaxton was the father, a small, slight man. His son, Peter, was a much taller chap who had white, curly, Afro-style hair, unusual at the time. They were decent people.
I turned up and said, ‘Good morning, Peter, I’m now working for myself – it’s A M S Trading Company – and I’ve got some aerials to show you. I know you’ve sold them in the past.’
I wonder to this day whether he gave me an order because of my sales patter or out of the kindness of his heart. If it was the latter, I’m forever grateful.
By Thursday of that week, I’d sold my first batch of aerials and had been back to buy some more. I had made £60 profit. Now £60 profit was inconceivable at the time, but it then became my weekly target to earn that by at least Wednesday. I must be sounding like a bit of a nutter now. After all, a) what’s Wednesday got to do with the price of cocoa? And b) where did the figure of £60 come from? Well, it was a target, and as the weeks went on, nine times out of ten I did achieve this £60 target by Wednesday. The discipline was to carry on through Thursday and Friday and make some more because at some point a rainy day would come.
And rainy days did come because my showroom, my warehouse and my business were all, in fact, the minivan. And this fifty-quid heap of junk kept breaking down. It was always at the garage, and without wheels I was wiped out.
*
Now let me officially introduce you to Gulu Lalvani, a character who has crossed paths with me time and time again, as you’ll find out later. He was an importer with premises in Paul Street in the City area. When I first met Gulu and his brother Partap, they both wore turbans. However, not long afterwards, Gulu decided to remove his and take on more of a Western style with a closely trimmed beard. He was rather tall and well-built, and had a sort of charm that women found attractive. Many years later, I would see him doing his familiar party-piece to impress the ladies by telling them he was some kind of psychic. He would hold their hands and bullshit his way through reading the lines on their palms – of course, he made it up as he went along. When I ridiculed him about this, he told me he was blessed with this power and he knew what he was talking about. I was amazed to see the ladies fall for this crap.
The name of Gulu and Partap’s company was J. Parker & Co. Ltd, an unexpected name for a company run by a couple of Asian brothers. It’s rumoured that one of the first products Gulu sold was a replica Parker pen and he tried to overcome copyright infringement by printing the name ‘J PARKER’ on it, with the ‘J’ being quite faint. I have no idea if it is true or not but it’s a great story. On reflection, my take on their choice of business name is that it was their way of trying to anglicise the company. Racial discrimination was rife in those days. It was bad enough against Jews in business, but it was even worse against Asians. Gulu employed a stand-up British sales manager, attired in a pin-striped suit and blue spotted tie. This gentleman headed up sales to the outside world – the interface when dealing with traditional British companies.
I first met Gulu and Partap when I was working for Henson. Apparently, Gulu was a bit of a lad and they used to say that he and John Henson would share some rather interesting evenings, boozing and birding. Now that I was in business for myself, Gulu would sell me goods for cash only. I had expanded my range beyond car aerials to transistor radios, but would only be able to afford one carton at a time, which might contain twenty radios. Initially, Gulu would ask me to pay him in banknotes; he wouldn’t even take a cheque. I had to go to the bank, withdraw cash, take it round to Gulu’s and pick up my box of goods. I always asked for an invoice to show the purchase tax had been paid.
I was coming back every couple of days to pick up more radios and eventually he accepted my cheques, although, if I remember rightly, he cleared them specially. But to be fair to the man, after a while we got to the stage where if I gave him a post-dated cheque, he would allow me to take more than one carton of radios. When I came back to pick up some more stock, then, and only then, would he present my cheque.
For any youngsters looking in, there’s a business lesson to be learned here. What I’ve just described to you is building a relationship with your supplier. I don’t blame Gulu one tiny bit for demanding cash up front because he was dealing not just with me, but with loads of market traders, as well as a bunch of flyboys. I would come across these crooks in the months and years ahead; people who would think nothing of writing out cheques that bounced.
So what happened over the course of maybe a couple of months was that I established myself with Gulu to the extent that, although he perhaps didn’t quite trust me 100 per cent yet, he made the calculated decision to give me a bit of credit – and that was because I hadn’t let him down. And I’ve never let anyone down since. It illustrates an important point: it’s what you do in practice that gains you business credibility, not hype or empty promises. I guess it comes down to the old adage: actions speak louder than words.