by Sugar, Alan
I told Chenchen, ‘Basically our amplifier is crap. The long and short of it is that the circuitry’s rubbish – it doesn’t have enough guts in it to produce the sound quality required.’
It was too late to do anything about it. I’d bought over 2,000 kits of components for this unit and we needed to make them. It wasn’t that they didn’t work – they did – but let’s just say that if one were using it to listen to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the gentlemen playing the triangle and the double bass might as well have packed up and gone home, because the higher and lower frequencies were mostly absent.
Around this time, I changed the name of the company to A M S Trading (Amstrad) Ltd, and a couple of interesting stories emerged.
As production started to increase, I saw we had no expertise as far as assembly was concerned. Neither did we have any stock control system in place to ensure we didn’t run out of components. I don’t know what made me do this, but I called my old boss Sam Korobuck and asked him whether he would come and work for me, as he was a bit of a technical man. Sam accepted the job and started to professionalise our production process – the sort of thing he’d been doing all his life.
Chenchen, who by now had persuaded me to employ his wife to do the bookkeeping, did not like Sam’s intervention. Sam used to talk a lot of sense. He would point out, diplomatically, that parts of the circuitry were not very good and that the assembly process was poor and inefficient. The internal construction of the amplifier was a joke, and Sam took it upon himself to design a small PCB (printed circuit board) which would do away with a lot of the wiring.
Chenchen couldn’t really argue against it, though he wanted to. He had started to realise he couldn’t blind me with science any more – I was learning the ropes fast. He knew he’d have to cut back on the Richter scale of bullshit.
As the years went on, I became very proficient in sussing out bullshit. The technical people I employed soon realised this and learned to tell the truth and own up to mistakes, or simply admit it when they didn’t know the answer.
In spite of the problem with the Amstrad 8000, I was getting loads of orders, but the customer I really wanted to land was Comet, who had changed the face of retailing – they started discount warehousing. Most of their business was mail-order, though they did have a few warehouses in the north of England, so customers could turn up and buy in person. They took out full-page adverts in the hi-fi magazines and national newspapers, listing the names and prices of all the products they stocked. Customers would decide on which product they wanted, then simply look up Comet’s price and purchase it. This form of retailing signalled the demise of the small electrical shop on the street corner, which simply couldn’t compete.
The hi-fi boom was aided by this method of retailing. Manufacturers would advertise in hi-fi magazines and reviewers would give their expert opinions. Based on these reviews, various products would be commended as good value. The manufacturers’ adverts would show the retail price – for example, a Leak amplifier at £40 – and Comet would list it at a discount, say £35.
Their chief buyer, Gerry Mason, was nearly impossible to get hold of; he was being chased by every single supplier. I finally got Mason on the phone and tried to convince him that as our amplifier was so much cheaper than the others he was advertising, it would sell well and he should include it in his listings. After a lot of ducking and diving and about five phone calls, he agreed to a compromise: he wouldn’t place an order, but agreed to list it in his advertising to see if there was any demand.
I pulled a bit of a stunt which, from a moral point of view, is not something one should be proud of, but business is business and it didn’t harm Comet in the end. I got Chenchen, Johnnie and a few others to send orders with cheques to Comet for Amstrad 8000 amplifiers. Consider, Comet had none of these in stock. When they received orders so quickly after the first advert, I banked on it sparking off a large order from them.
I received a phone call from Gerry Mason’s assistant who wanted to order six amplifiers to fulfil her mail-order requirements. Now came the big gamble.
‘Six?’ I said to the lady. Are you joking or what? We are a manufacturer – we don’t mess about with six. You’re supposed to be Comet – the big discount warehouse company. We cannot ship you anything less than a hundred pieces.’
‘I’ll get back to you,’ she said.
Half an hour later, she did get back to me. ‘Right,’ she said, ‘we’ll take a hundred pieces.’
This was another milestone in the Amstrad story – once we had got into Comet, things really started to happen.
Comet was originally the only choice for people who wanted equipment at discount prices, though mostly they’d have to buy it mail-order. However, when companies like G. W. Smith and Laskys jumped on the bandwagon, customers had the option (which they preferred) of visiting the shops to see and touch the product before buying. Comet had to spread from their northern roots and open branches all over the country to compete. All these new-style electronic retailers were buying from me. I had the cheapest amplifier in the marketplace, it looked great value for money and it was British-made to boot.
Having witnessed this success, Chenchen and his wife were starting to think that they were my partners, though there were never any such discussions. He had never put a penny into this business and both of them were being paid very well. Nevertheless, they felt that Amstrad’s success was down to George. They could not see that it was me, the chief cook and bottle-washer, who made it all happen.
Trust me when I tell you that I am very loyal to my staff. People whom I work with and those that have helped to bring me fortune have nothing to complain about – I look after them all. This bloke deserved nothing.
Chenchen was the only electronics engineer we had, so after the products were assembled, they would come to him for final testing before they moved on for boxing and shipping out. There was no one else who could do it, and as a result, he was constantly holding me to ransom over the hours he worked, thus restricting the output of tested amplifiers, and his wife would be harping on at me: ‘Without George, you would be nowhere.’
I could see their attitude changing week by week, as the prosperity of the company and sales of the product grew. At the same time, the arrival of Sam Korobuck made Chenchen more and more frustrated. Sam had incorporated some new production methods and, in doing so, had recruited some new people. In turn, Chenchen took on some allies in the factory – a couple of girls from Sunderland who were his favourites. In his eyes, they could do no wrong, and he sat them on the production line close to him.
I’m about to tell you a story that has haunted me all my life, and still haunts me to this day.
Sam had recruited the services of a young black kid, around fifteen years old. In those days, racial discrimination was rife. Chenchen was always dropping hints about black people – ‘those people’, as he would call them. I won’t go into detail, as it makes me sick to think of it.
Sam sat the kid down and showed him how to assemble a PCB by inserting the components then turning the board over and soldering them into place. Sam had explained to him that we needed approximately fifty of these a day, but that he didn’t expect him to produce all fifty – he should just do his best, as we had other operators doing the same.
I can visualise that kid now. He was happy as Larry, beavering away assembling these boards. Sam would come up to me and whisper, ‘Look at that kid go – he’s fantastic, he’s really doing well.’
However, Chenchen would get up from his testing seat and go up to the kid and say to him, ‘Look here, son, this is what’s called a dry joint. I’m sat over there, working my arse off trying to fix these amplifiers, and you are making more faults with these dry joints, so watch out.’
A ‘dry joint’ meant that a component on the PCB wasn’t making good contact due to poor soldering. In truth, there may have been the odd dry joint – even the Sunderland dollies made them – but certainly there wer
e no more than you would expect from any good operator. Chenchen was just angry that Sam had pulled off a great coup with this kid, who was the star of the factory. Chenchen couldn’t stand it that a young black boy was making his favourites look stupid.
On one particular day, at about four in the afternoon, Chenchen cracked. He went up behind this child and screamed in his ear, ‘I’m not going to accept any more of this rubbish work you’re doing.’
He screamed at him for maximum effect, to impress the two girls, shocking everyone else. The kid must have responded in some way because Chenchen cranked up the volume and started ranting, ‘Don’t you tell me about this and that – I’m fed up with it, I’m not accepting these faults any more. Get up and get out!’
The poor kid got up. With his head down and his shoulders slumped, he walked off the factory floor past the onlookers. Chenchen sat himself down muttering, ‘I’m not going to put up with this. I’m sat here testing these things and he’s making more faults than I’m testing.’ Trust me when I tell you that the dry joints tale was a total, absolute pack of lies. In his small-minded way, Chenchen hated Sam because he was doing well and could not stand to see the kid progress. Chenchen’s outburst demonstrated what a racist idiot he was. The horror of that moment still haunts me and is one of the main reasons why, from then on, I was determined to give the utmost attention and respect to black people.
Over the years, as I became more recognisable to the general public, my wife has noticed something about me. I can be quite dismissive towards people who approach me in public places – sometimes rudely interrupting me – but she tells me that if it’s a black person, I seem to have the time and patience for them. Only a wife could spot that.
I’ve never explained to her why because I never knew myself. It has taken these reflections, while writing this book, to make me understand. By the way, let me make it clear that Ann is the last person on this planet to be a racist or anything like that.
I wish I could find that ‘kid’, who of course would be well into his fifties by now. Can you imagine his thoughts? How I wish I could be beamed back in time to that moment. I just stood there and let it happen and I hate myself for that. Given my time over again, I would have grabbed George by what little hair he had left and kicked his arse down the stairs – with his wife tumbling after.
When it happened, Sam looked at me, shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. Sam, of course, was much older than me, far more experienced in life, and was diplomatically tight-lipped over the affair. My dad also observed the incident and asked me, ‘What was wrong with the kid? He was a hard worker.’ My dad had respect for George, the so-called ‘technical man’, and ranked him as important. I didn’t want to discuss this with my dad, as he wouldn’t have understood the real motives.
A week or so went by. Chenchen knew he had me by the balls. He told me he wasn’t happy with the way the factory was run and that I had to choose between him and Sam. ‘It’s either me, who’s at the end of the production line testing the items, enabling you to ship the stuff out, or Sam, who just makes them.’
Even now, while I’m telling this story, I feel like punching a brick wall in frustration. That lunchtime, I took Sam down to the café and spelled it out to him honestly. Sam understood the situation and took it very well. I can’t remember the financial severance I offered him, but certainly I gave him at least a month’s pay to tide him over until he sorted himself out.
I was burning up inside. Chenchen had shown his true colours.
My dad asked what was going on with Sam – he couldn’t understand what Sam had done wrong – and this time I gave him the full story. I told him Chenchen had me over a barrel, but I would sort it out.
This was not the right thing to say to a born worrier like my dad. He immediately went into, ‘Who’s going to test the amplifiers if you get rid of George Chenchen?’
I told him I didn’t care and that my mind was made up – Chenchen was on his way out as soon as it suited me. My father started giving me his input as to the pros and cons. At this point my patience ran out and, I guess disrespectfully, I raised my voice to him.
‘Stop worrying,’ I said. ‘I will sort it out. No one is going to hold me to ransom. It’s not worth any amount of money in the world to be a wimp, so just leave it and get on with your work.’
I made my mind up about two things that day. One, never again would I allow anybody to make any racist or discriminatory comments to any of my staff. And two, never again would I put myself in a position where one person controls my destiny.
*
As our orders were getting bigger, we needed to assemble more and more PCBs. The capacity of the Great Sutton Street factory was limited, so we subcontracted out to a small assembly plant up in Norfolk, run by Chenchen’s friend Stan Randall and his partner Roger. They would take kits of components from us and bring us back finished PCBs. Stan was a fast-and-loose talker and he mentioned one day that Chenchen and his wife had the hump with me. He confirmed my feeling that they imagined they were partners of mine. But what I didn’t know was that Chenchen had secretly designed his own amplifier and was going to set up production himself. Stan felt that he needed to let me know this.
This was both funny and outrageous. The funny bit was that Chenchen felt he could do what I had done – in truth, he couldn’t sell a box of matches to a chain smoker who’d lost his lighter. The outrageous bit was that he’d been busy designing his own product behind my back.
Instead of blowing my top and chucking him out there and then, I decided to turn the situation to my advantage. I took Chenchen to one side and calmly said, ‘What’s going on, George? I hear you’ve made your own amplifier.’
To show off in front of his wife and the two northern girls, he raised his voice and started speaking in a very loud, authoritative manner, to such an extent that he could be heard across the whole floor.
I said, ‘George, why are you deliberately raising your voice? Who are you trying to impress? Your two girlfriends? Because it’s not working. Just calm down a little.’
That put him in his place. I asked him again about his new amplifier. He explained, ‘Well, I’m working my nuts off here and all I’m getting is a salary. I feel you owe all this success to me, so now I want to do it for myself.’
Instead of arguing with him and telling him he was deluded, I surprised him by asking him what circuit he’d adopted for the design of his amplifier, and what was its specification.
I think he was taken aback, as he was expecting me to do my nut, but instead here was I enquiring about his new product. He was such an idiot that he rattled off some technical details, the last thing you’d do with a future competitor. I responded, ‘That’s better than the 8000. Why didn’t you do that for me?’
‘Well,’ he blustered, ‘things move on. It’s a matter of opinion whether it’s better than the 8000.’ Complete nonsense. He knew he’d designed a pup in the 8000 and his ‘new model’ was much improved. I was biting my tongue and I told him I wouldn’t stand in his way – he was free to do as he wished. However, he would need to understand that I’d have to replace him.
So I didn’t fire him on the spot, and we agreed that he would stay on until I got a replacement. He returned to his position and carried on testing. He must have felt like he’d got away with murder.
I asked Stan Randall for advice on where to advertise for a new engineer. A couple of weeks later, enter Mr Mike Forsey, a slight, feeble-looking fellow with a strange walk and a Hitler moustache. Forsey seemed to know his stuff, though you didn’t need to know much to surpass Chenchen. Stan also found another chap, George Shrubsole, who worked for an amplifier company in Wimbledon, and we offered him a job. Stan was proving very helpful. I think he liked the fact I’d come from nowhere and was growing a business with a brand name that was taking on the likes of Armstrong and Leak.
With Forsey in place and Chenchen expecting to stay on for a few more weeks, I waited for my moment. One day, Che
nchen was sitting at the end of the production line as usual, with his chest stuck out, like a peacock. He had a renewed sense of pride, having let everyone in the factory know he was leaving to start on his own.
I walked up behind him in a calm manner and told him to get up, get his wife and clear off. He was dumbstruck. He’d expected to stay for a bit longer. ‘Right, George, time for you to go, mate. I’ve bitten my tongue and put up with you and your blackmail for far too long. Get your things and your wife, and go now.’ Rather cheekily, I said all this in a loud tone, so the rest of the workers could hear. He was kind of sacked in front of all them and they heard why. He stormed off without saying a word.
I still remember his wife saying to me, ‘I don’t know why I should be telling you this, but the petty cash box key is under the filing cabinet door.’
I felt good about getting rid of the pair of them, but there I was without a clue how to do the payroll for the week! In desperation, I called my accountant and said, ‘I have no one to do the PAYE – what am I supposed to do?’ It’s quite amazing how, at the time, I felt this was such a massive problem. My accountant simply sent one of his clerks along, who knocked off the PAYE for us in half a morning and told me how much money to take out of the bank to put in the pay-packets.
Now George Shrubsole, under the supervision of Mike Forsey, sat at the end of the production line testing amplifiers. He even managed to train a couple of the line workers to do the tests, so over the course of two to three weeks, Chenchen – this person who I’d thought had me by the balls, this animal who’d screamed at that kid and made me get rid of Sam Korobuck – was nothing to me any more.
It was big lesson learned – no one is indispensable.
*
So there I was, twenty-four years old, running my own factory, employing about thirty people. I’d built a company selling a product bearing the brand name Amstrad and was competing with the rest of the industry. Naturally, news of this success precipitated through my family and they were all very pleased for me. Similarly, Ann’s family saw me in a new light, as you might expect.