After two years in the RAF, I returned to civilian life and joined the business my father had founded 37 years earlier. I'd worked there as an unpaid clerk during my school years, so understood what was ahead of me.
It was a very basic job driven by a desire to continue what my father had started.  I had no desirable qualifications and it seemed the sensible thing to do.  Over the next two decades I took an interest in the national trade federation.

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I worked in South Wales Wireless Installation Co. Ltd., a business of which my father was Managing Director. We were wholesalers and in the days of Purchase Tax, which preceded VAT we were exempt, but acted as tax collectors. The tax which was levied at different rates depending on the goods' luxuriousness. Consequently we had to issue a letter to our suppliers to enable them to supply us free of Purchase Tax. To this day I can remember the wording of that three paragraph letter which began, “In accordance with the Finance Act 1941, we authorise and request you to supply us good without the addition of Purchase Tax and we shall be accountable to the Crown for payment of Tax thereon.. . . .”

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Normal working for all of us, not just where I was learning the trade, was a five and half day week. It was an easier start with most people starting at 9 a.m. and going home around 5 p.m.  That did cause much more peak hour congestion on buses and trams of Cardiff, but the roads weren't particularly busy as few used cars to go to work.

 

I met people from similar businesses and we exchanged lots of ideas. By 1970 I'd become national chairman of the Radio Wholesalers Federation and somewhere we had a scrap book of photographs, speeches, notes of visits abroad to Japan and I made some useful contacts in that period. It must have taken 10 years for me to get control of the shareholdings when the other two outsiders retired.  But with hindsight it was not the best time to invest in a small local company. The 1964 election had been won by Labour with a slender margin. The big issue was the abolition of Resale  Price Maintenance which was the death-knell of the small retailer.  Until then, a manufacturer could decide the retail price of its products. This had the benefit of securing a profit for the makers, the distributors and retailers but it defied the natural laws of economics. In a prospering economy there were plenty of entrepreneurs who wanted to be released from manufacturers' constraints.  They were prepared to buy in bulk and sell from low cost warehouses rather than high street stores.  They soon won the day and legislation that controlled prices was dropped. This is when big stores like Comet could begin to sell washing machines at rock bottom prices.  It soon spread and every product with a decent profit margin for the small retailer became available from large bulk outlets at a substantial discount. This ran many retailers to the ground.  It was particularly significant in the radio trade where many servicemen had been discharged from the second world war and set up with their knowledge of radio and radar in the late 1940s.  These technical people by now had been in business for 25 years and some were thinking of retiring.  So the upshot of this was the customer base for South Wales Wireless diminished and we had to look for industrial and other outlets for the stock we held. We moved towards big items like washing machine, fridges, TVs  but still had a good reputation for having lots of spares, accessories and components.   But by now I had a business overdraft of £100,000 and a young family, so we continued for a decade until 1974/5, then I closed the business.  After I'd gone through the pain of clearing out all the unwanted stock and selling the premises it dawned on me I was 39 years old and feeling rather unemployable as I had no worthwhile qualification.

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The beginnings of Consultancy

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I did, however, have some business knowledge and thought I could help others by offering consultancy advice.  I set up Penarth Management and carried out the first few consultancy assignments single handed.  Shortly afterwards my good friend George Munday joined me as a partner and because of his strong engineering background we were able to break into the offshore oil industry.   We spent seven years at that before expanding into a broader range of work.

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