What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography (30 page)

I was laughing up my sleeve. Ronnie Colson, poseur extraordinaire, had missed Sammy Davis Junior. Unbelievable! He would be plutzing no end. He would have milked every minute of it, but he'd dumped me at the hotel and missed the opportunity to meet one of the world's greatest celebrities.

When I got back to England, I rushed the film to a processor and asked them to print ten copies of the picture of me and Sammy Davis Junior. I express airmailed one to Ronnie with a letter saying that it was very nice of him to host me and that I happened to have bumped into Sammy Davis Junior and we'd had a great afternoon. I wrote, 'Sammy was intrigued by the camera your friend gave me, so much so, he invited me up to his suite and I spent a couple of hours there, which really helped kill the time before I had to go to the airport. Shame you missed it, Ron. Never mind.'

I knew this porky would wind him up no end, and I was right. He called me a week later and put on an American accent, making out he was Sammy Davis, just to check if it was true. I wound him up so much - it was great. 'Such a shame you had to leave, Ronnie. You'd have loved it up there in Sammy's suite - you know, the Imperial Suite on the top floor.'

Should I Take the Money and Run?

1978-9

As the company grew, so did the number of staff. The new people I took on experienced the rapid growth and success of Amstrad, and they shared in the excitement. This applied to all the staff, from those who sat on the production line to those in managerial positions. I wasn't one of those bosses who appointed a manager and left them to deal with the lower level' people. I was heavily involved with everyone. In fact, it's fair to say that I was chief cook and bottle-washer.

Now that I reflect on it, I can remember seeing the confusion on the faces of people like Dave Smith, the production manager, when he saw me talking directly to his workers. He'd give me a look as if to say, 'What are you doing? I'm supposed to do that.' It wasn't always easy for the managers to get to grips with my style as a boss, but in the end they understood it and, more to the point, understood me. I've always believed that I shouldn't ask anyone to do what I can't do myself. Many's the time when we started making a new model that I would sit on the production line and assemble the first units. This exercise helped me when I was envisaging future products; it gave me an idea of the complexity of the production process we were about to embark upon.

In truth, I am not happy unless I know every detail of what goes on - that means assembly, material costs and supply chain, as well as the technical workings. The commercial side of sales and marketing just comes naturally to me. In the future, Rupert Murdoch would say, 'This fellow Sugar knows where every nut and bolt in his company is,' a description I was happy with!

My style of management meant that the staff felt I was speaking to them on their level and in an informed manner. I really believed I'd created a family
culture at Amstrad. For this reason, I was hurt to discover that a member of staff had betrayed my trust.

One day, our accountant at Ridley Road was off sick, so Dave Smith went into his office to pick up some uncollected paypackets for the people who hadn't been in the previous Friday. In a drawer, Dave noticed paypackets for people who'd left the company a while ago and had been paid in full. He sussed out that something was wrong and brought it to my attention. I asked my accountancy firm to investigate the PAYE and they discovered that our accountant had been embezzling from the company for several months. I called in the police and he was well and truly nicked. This was the first time I had encountered someone stealing from me.

I recruited a new accountant, also called David Smith. He was a tall, well-groomed young man who looked a bit out of place in the rough Ridley Road surroundings. If I recall correctly, he'd been made redundant and took this position as a stop-gap. He was a very nice fellow, quiet and unassuming, which is why he was shaken when two Scottish labourers we employed phoned him up and told him that they were leaving that Friday and if they didn't get their money, they were going to 'come down and punch his fucking head in'.

They worked at our overflow factory in Shacklewell Lane, just a few hundred yards from our main premises. I'd acquired this extra factory as we were busting at the seams at Ridley Road and needed more space for bulky items such as loudspeakers.

From my regular visits to Shacklewell Lane, I knew who these two were, but didn't realise they were trouble. I was annoyed to find out that not only had these two rogues threatened David, they were also causing havoc in the factory - they had no regard for timekeeping and came and went when they fancied. When I told the other Dave Smith I was going up there to sort them out, he warned me that they were a pair of big bruiser lunatics and that everybody was petrified of them. He advised me to take care. With that in mind, I grabbed a crowbar and stuck it in my car before I went up to Shacklewell Lane.

It was about midday. When I asked the factory manager, Colin Baker, where these two were, he told me they were in the pub.

'In the pub?' I asked. 'Why would they be in there? They're supposed to be working here.'

He shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, 'I can't control them - they're a law unto themselves.'

I walked down to the pub on the corner and, like the Milky Bar Kid,
pushed the saloon doors open. I saw these two yobs sitting with a group of people. With crowbar in hand, I pointed at them. 'You two, get out here.'

Like two little lambs, they put down their drinks and came out. I screamed at them to get their stuff from the factory and get the hell out. I threw their paypackets at them. By the time we were back outside the factory, they were over their shock and getting angry. One of them said, 'You've embarrassed us in front of our drinking pals - now put that doon.' He was referring to the crowbar I was nervously tapping against the side of my leg.

I said, 'I'm not stupid enough to put this down. If either of you come anywhere near me, I'll wrap it round your head.'

This stand-off at the OK Shacklewell Lane Corral lasted about five minutes. One of them picked up an empty milk bottle as if he were going to throw it at me - instead, he threw it to the ground and it smashed. As they edged towards me, I lifted the crowbar again, warning them, 'Come one step further and I promise you, this will be landing on your head.' By now, a crowd had gathered. After a few more verbal exchanges, they finally walked off, muttering that they would get me in the end.

That was the last time we saw those two idiots. Why am I telling this story? Well, it does have a funny ending. I was going on holiday with Ann and the kids the next day and when I got out of bed the following morning, my right leg was stiff. I couldn't understand why, but when I looked down at my thigh, it was black and blue from all my nervous tapping of the crowbar. Ann was killing herself laughing when I showed her my bruising and told her the story behind it.

David Smith, the accountant, left shortly afterwards, and I recruited a new fellow, Jim Rice, to replace him. Jim was a qualified accountant, a nice-natured, shortish chap with blond, curly hair. To cope with the company's growth, he expanded the accounts department and introduced some new systems.

Also important in the life of Amstrad was Dickie Mould, who joined around this time. Dickie had watched from afar our meteoric rise from minnow to major player in the hi-fi market. He introduced himself as someone who had his own business manufacturing loudspeakers. In reality, his business was going down the pan, but, in hindsight, knowing Dickie's character, I can see how it would have been impossible for him to admit it.

He explained that he was well connected with all the hi-fi retailers and that while I had made inroads into the larger companies, he would be able to sell to all the smaller retailers, some of whom advertised in the hi-fi magazines and had two or more branches. He talked a good game, so I employed
him as sales manager. To be fair, he did have connections and he did generate some sales with the smaller retailers.

Trouble was, I was always trying to keep him at a distance. He was continuously trying to edge his way into the upper echelons of power. It was starting to feel like shades of Chenchen and wife. The best way to describe Dickie is to liken him to the character Boycie in
Only Fools and Horses.
He had the same sneering air of superiority and even looked a bit like Boycie, with his Brylcreemed, slicked-back hair and small, spivvy moustache. He was taller than me and always wore a three-piece suit with a waistcoat.

I had never come across someone so protective of their status. Dickie would say things such as, 'Of course, Alan,
you and I
fully understand everything that's going on, but the others [referring to the other members of staff] don't.' He saw the other staff as plebs and himself as some superior being. Think about Boycie and you'll get the gist. He continually spoke about his big house in Rochford and how he had his own snooker table. He'd go on about how he too was a private pilot and once owned an Auster plane.

Dickie's mannerisms gave rise to a lot of jibing within the company. He would keep his cigarettes in a specially made pocket inside his jacket and would take out the packet, open it, whip out a cigarette and return the packet to his pocket in one swift movement. Never did he think of offering one to others.

What made people laugh most was the chain that hung inside his jacket which was connected to a wallet containing his credit cards. I asked him once why he had the chain. He said that it was a precaution, in case his wallet fell out of his jacket. In those days, credit cards weren't as widespread as they are now. Nevertheless, Dickie had the lot: Diners Club, American Express, MasterCard, Barclaycard - you name it, he had it. And, of course, he was a 'premier member' of each one - what else would you expect from Boycie? Despite this show of wealth, he was a bit tight as things go, and was always rather shy in coming forward to buy a round of drinks. Once when he did, I recall jibing him, saying, 'Blimey, Halley's Comet must be due this week!'

He also had a funny way of speaking. Instead of agreeing with an 'okay', his favourite expression was 'Righto, ducks.' I never did understand what it meant, but I'm told it's some East End expression. It was something you'd always hear when people were mimicking Dickie. Some called him Tricky Dickie or his full title, Tricky Dickie Righto Ducks.

When we visited our customers, I would exchange pleasantries with most of the bosses on first-name terms. However, in those days, things were still rather formal and you would not expect a member of staff lower down the
chain to address Comet's Gerry Mason or Derek Smith of G. W. Smith by their first names. When I took Dickie along to meetings, it would wind me up no end to hear him calling these people by their first names, as if they were his best mates. You could see from the expression on their faces that it wound them up too.

Dickie had to be brought down to earth a few times during his first six months of employment, sometimes by my deliberate put-downs in front of the other staff -
they
were just as valuable to me as he was, if not more so, and they were clearly getting the hump over Dickie walking around as the big I Am. But eventually the penny did drop with Amstrad's own little Boycie and he tweaked up his people skills and calmed the situation down within the first year.

*

By the mid-seventies, we were flat out trying to produce amplifiers. The prospect of expanding our production line was daunting - it was very labour-intensive, very technical and a giant headache in the overall scheme of things.

I took stock of my business model. It was to design products (aesthetically and technically) that were needed for the marketplace - and market them. However, in the middle of all of this was the nightmare of assembly and manufacture, which I viewed as an occupational hazard. If I could subcontract this element of the business out, we'd be left with doing what we were best at - designing, controlling the cost of the bill of material and brilliant marketing. In those days, we were still assembling our PCBs manually. This entailed placing the components into the boards and hand-soldering them. This was only practicable if your production runs were low. Large-volume manufacturing used auto-insertion machines which mechanically picked and placed components onto the PCB and then processed the board through a flow-soldering machine. I was not prepared to move in that direction. To me, expanding the business by investing in mechanisation was a no-win situation.

Stan Randall pointed out to me that the company Fidelity, run by the great industry icon Jack Dickman and his three sons, made large volumes of music centres by totally sub-contracting out their PCB assembly, which just left them with the job of final assembly. This rang my bells. I got Stan to contact Fidelity's sub-contractor, L & N Radio in Chatham, Kent, who specialised in electronic assembly. Using them would result in a win-win situation. They'd be promised orders from me, they'd have no headaches about where their business was coming from and they wouldn't need to procure materials, as we would free-issue them the parts. All they'd need to do was concentrate
on what they were best at - assembly and quality control - and deliver us finished modules ready for final assembly and testing. If I could negotiate a good assembly price for every module, I would fix my costs by adding the bill of material to their labour charge.

This was to be the key to Amstrad's future. We were free to concentrate solely on brilliant design, speed to market and amazing bill of material cost control, rounded off with expert marketing and sales.