We found an ideal and newly built depot in Uckfield, in an excellent position directly on one of the major roundabouts situated on the town’s bypass. Uckfield was as good a central point to our (80%) marketing area as Read more ›
1990 80/20 time again. 80% of our sales were in a quadrant bordered by the A24 Horsham to Worthing road, the A21 Hastings to Tunbridge Wells road, the sea to the south, and the A264 Tunbridge Wells to Horsham Read more ›
INSIGHT 115:- I was told by Mick Bevan, my original ‘Alpine Training Manager’ in 1973: not everybody’s as hard up as you are – don’t assume you know what somebody wants or can afford. Turnover: £6,938,000, profit: £759,000, net worth: Read more ›
Back to the UK with a tremendous team spirit, which remained for the rest of the year. We were figuring out as we went how the new business model was actually going to work, including setting up one big Read more ›
The Tropicana Hotel (3,000 bedrooms) where we were staying was amazing. The venue for the fight was part of the Las Vegas Hilton which had some 5,000 bedrooms. There were 2,500 Brits supporting Frank in the 10,000 capacity auditorium, Read more ›
January 1989 was our most successful month ever: we had shut down our showroom network, virtually halved our sales force, and had record sales. We were all very happy, and 10 of us were on the way to Las Read more ›
We raised another £500,000 from the sale of the properties, including the freeholds; we were now trading solidly off of our own cash and had no need of any bank facility at all. We had not been under any Read more ›
I had been on some management training courses – one was all about the art of delegation and ‘letting go’. Our Hastings showroom’s lease was renewed and it was in desperate need of refurbishment generally, and new displays. My Read more ›
They agreed to our terms and we got the letter signed by the main board. It was such an enormous order that it would keep their factory going for a couple of months, and an excellent way for them Read more ›
The bank still had us on a short leash and Browbroke was still causing us problems; we were still chasing cash in virtually every day and were regularly coming very close to having cheques ‘sent back’ for re-presenting. We Read more ›