My Life Story

In theory if you looked at my early life “I did not really stand a chance.”

I was born in a small village, with a population base of around 100 people. My father was a coal miner and worked his guts out for my mum, brother and I. He spent 31 long years down a hole in the ground digging coal trying to scrape some sort of living.

When I was old enough to start college the advice given to me at that time by dad was “Do not work with your hands, work with your head. You do not want to go and work down the coal mine.”

There was no way I would have ever considered digging coal as it was far to intensive for me and being naturally lazy I was more interested in the first option.
However it was actually years before that advice really sunk in. Dad’s hobby was short wave radio and my interest turned toward electronics as a career.

The world surely has never had a worse radio technician than me although I did actually gain a 1st class certificate in Radio Technology back in 1965.

My schooling at Huntly College in New Zealand was nothing short of a disaster, I gained the worst mark the school has ever seen in mathematics (possibly even to this day) a miserable 4%.
My English was not much better and over all I left that school feeling pretty sorry for myself. I did three years of hard labor there and the day I got released I ripped up all of my books.
This was in 1960 and I was fifteen years old. All I knew was I hated school; I had to leave the area if I was to embark on any kind of career.

Those next few years were tough; I thought all the great opportunities in life had passed me by. It was pretty clear to me that those people who appeared to be successful in life were around when all the good jobs were being handed out.

I was sure angry and negative in those days but some remarkable things were to happen to me over the next few years.

After moving to Auckland and living with my Aunt and Uncle I started work at Smiths Sound Ltd in Victoria St and my hopes were pinned on gaining a five year apprenticeship as a Radio Serviceman.
Barry Smith and Ivan Guthrie owned the business and it did not take them long to figure out that I was pretty useless. I got fired a few weeks after I started and to this day I have no idea why as one did not need an excuse in those days but it was the best thing they ever did.

I then joined Plessey NZ Ltd. This was an English communication company who among other things built Radio Communication transceivers for vehicles.

After managing four years there and only getting fired once during that time I did OK. I was working on the assembly line and the factory manager Laurie Grigg also spotted my shortcomings. He got a guy called Ken Carter to give me notice (about five minutes in those days) and I was on my way. However a wonderful American guy by the name of Dave Keller ran the testing and special department and found out what had happened.
He knew I was passionate about electronics and convinced the powers to be to have me back.
They immediately placed me under Dave’s care and I worked in the Special department from then on.
I went to the Auckland Technical Institute from then on and gained a first class Certificate in Radio Technology.

The minute I got qualified I was off to Concord Communications, a guitar amplifier manufacturer owned and run by one real cool dude Bennie Gunn.
Ben was and still is to this day one of New Zealand’s greatest Jazz Pianists.

It was at Concord that I met Denis (Doc) O’Callahan a brilliant technician (who later started Radio Hauraki) and Glyn Tucker who later started and owned Mandrill Recording Studios in Parnell. Both of these people remain friends to this very day.

I left Concord Communications not long after Denis became involved with Radio Hauraki. Much to Ben Gunn’s disgust, I was to join Denis and Ben asked me to give Doc the message “Stop Stealing my staff.”

I was involved with the early set up of Radio Hauraki when it was a pirate radio station and finally went to sea in the Hauraki Gulf.

However I still had desires to better myself, I also wanted to travel. On June 1st 1967 I took off to the United Kingdom as a green twenty one year old.

After four and a half years in London I married and my wife and I return to New Zealand overland via Persia and Afghanistan. (Another story).

On arriving back in New Zealand after so long it took me at least two years to get my feet back on the ground. Radio Hauraki now had a land license and as the excitement had gone for me I really had no idea what I wanted to do.
My good friend Andrew Smith employed me at Torr Hifi Center as a radio technician and I stayed there until the fateful day when Andrew sent me on a Dale Carnegie course to try and get rid of my negativity.

Dale Carnegie was a fourteen week motivational course that took place in the evening and by week seven I realized I was a useless technician and I wanted to sell.
I tried selling insurance and became reasonably successful at it until my wife won a trip back to England. It was on this trip I caught up with a master salesman and good kiwi friend Bruce Templeton who was now a top salesman with Rank Xerox in London.

Bruce impressed me; he owned a red Dino Ferrari and he parked it outside his flat in Hatch End. The reason it was outside was simple, he had an interest in wine as a hobby and his garage was filled to the brim with wine cases, more valuable than the Ferrari!

This really did it for me; I was going to join Xerox when I returned to New Zealand.

The Xerox Years:

This was another turning point in my life; I started in 1975 when I joined Rank Xerox in New Zealand as a trainee salesperson.

Believe it or not I had failed at a selling job in the UK during the sixties and quite frankly doubted my own ability on whether I could ever succeed at sales.

Within a short time and after the best professional sales training by the company I soon found my forte.
I achieved great success with Xerox; I sold major accounts for them and eventually became a qualified Sales Trainer with them.

The desire to own my own business was always in the back of my mind despite becoming a successful sales person.
It was Xerox that actually provided me the opportunity to get started in my own business. It all happened when the company sent me on a trip to their training center at Leesburg Virginia USA.

The flight was long and I decided to take a stopover in Los Angeles.
My friend Jim Riley from New Zealand was working with Xerox Corp at the downtown office in that city.

Jim owned a set of HIFI speakers called Miller and Kriesel, a three piece speaker system consisting of a powered twelve inch subwoofer and a small pair of two way satellite speakers. A passion of mine had always been HIFI, music and good sound and these speakers really appealed because they were different than I had ever heard or seen before.

Jim took me to see Jonas Miller and Ken Kreisel the owners of the company a short distance from his home.
My enthusiasm obviously showed and within a month I was offered distribution rights of the product for New Zealand and Australia.

On Return to New Zealand I left Xerox and started a company by the name of Sound Group Holdings Ltd.

Sound Group Holdings Ltd:

New Zealand at this time had crazy import restrictions and the importation of these goods in fully built up form was prohibited. The only way to successfully handle M & K was to import parts, build the cabinets locally and add value.
A license was required for these parts and near impossible to get unless the products were exported again from New Zealand.

Luckily I had secured an agreement for Australia as well as New Zealand so the license was obtainable. There was also some availability to sell locally because of the export therefore establishing my own business had become a reality.

Little did I know but a major turning point in my life then happened; it is still as vivid today as it was then. The feeling was incredible; I was going to work for myself after years of dreaming about it. I remember quitting my job at Xerox and leasing a new station wagon for the business.

I backed out of the driveway looking into the rear vision mirror shuddering with excitement.

Today was the day I had dreamed about for years. This was the first day of a twenty year journey into my very own business. Little did I know then about the success it would bring along with the sadness, rip offs, heart aches, ups and downs together with an ending that was unplanned and stupid.

When I left Xerox I had no money, I had convinced these good people in the USA to trust me and let me manufacture their product in New Zealand.

I had no factory, no market, no experience and no business plan.

My neighbor Lindsay Moss, a retired pharmaceutical representative could not understand how I could throw in a highly paid job at Xerox when I had a wife and two young children to support.

Once again I doubted my ability to succeed although I had no doubt I wanted to be in business for myself.

In hindsight the next move I made was one of the worst decisions I ever made, although it took me twenty years to discover. I took in a business partner.

Bob Leveloff was another Xerox employee and friend who had left before me and was then the manager of a printing ink company. Bob; an American living in New Zealand had some money to invest, he saw the passion in me and possibly even my vision, he convinced me to sell him 50% of the business that I had just formed.
Sound Group Holdings was now a partnership.

There is a big lesson here for any budding business person or entrepreneur, please take note as it has been said many times by people before me and no doubt will be said for many years to come.

“Do not go into business with friends.”

The mistake I made here was huge, despite warnings, the advice I was given by fellow workmates at Xerox and family all fell on deaf ears. My upbringing had taught me to trust fellow human beings and I remember Bob’s exact words at the time.

“It does not matter if we make much profit as long as we can pay our way and have fun doing it.” Little did I know then how his philosophy would change.

This sounded great to me, I had someone else to share the business risk and that seemed all the security I needed at the time. We drew up a formal partnership arrangement showing the allocation of shares but we left out the most important part. “Individual Responsibility.”

The business was a fledgling, it was only starting up and there was no talk of Bob entering the business in the foreseeable future. It was agreed I would manage the company until there became a time when it was big enough to support us both.

When that time arrived Bob would join but we omitted to agree on his role and this eventually proved to be my downfall.

This was a total oversight on my part, an absolute disaster and my own stupid fault, something I have lived to regret to this very day.

I do not blame Bob in any way however I believe we were seriously misguided by our accounting company and this was proven to be a fact in 2008 when I final sold my share in a building that Bob and I had bought together years earlier. Once again I was let down again due to my own stupidity and trust in other people.

However in those early days we did have fun, real fun, exciting times and when I think back to my own personal achievements during those years I still have to stop and take a breath.

The very first requirement of our business was to have speaker cabinets built for this new range of M&K speakers from the USA. We had no factory, no plan, and no idea of what to do. Fortunately I had an acquaintance by the name of Paul Edlin. He was a fellow Radio Technician, streets ahead of me and he had a small factory on the North shore of Auckland where he had established his company called Creative Electronics Ltd.
Paul was my first port of call as he was a manufacturer of printed circuit boards, he made assembly of power supplies and he also did contract work for other electronic companies.

Paul made me a generous offer of some factory space for me to build an assembly line for loudspeaker production, also the use of his staff and expertise.
All I needed to do now was find a cabinet manufacturer. Nothing could be easier right?

Well how wrong could I be, a speaker cabinet to most New Zealand Loudspeaker manufactures was rectangular boxes, these M&K speakers were the weirdest designs out and the “Volkswoofer” a 12 inch powered base unit was a cabinet with rounded corners and angled sides, a little like a pyramid with the top cut off.

I called on all of the cabinet makers I could find, they either all laughed and said they were not interested or the cost was going to totally prohibit the venture.

Amazing, here I was committed to manufacturing a product in New Zealand under license to an American company without even looking at costs!

After various knock backs, I was wondering what I was going to do, I had Paul starting to manufacture printed circuit boards for the crossover units. I had imported parts for the amplifier assembly to go inside the Volkswoofer.

Paul was screen printing back plates and panels for me and David Whittaker a loudspeaker guru in Auckland was winding Crossover coils for us.
I had no-one to make the most important part, the cabinets.
Talk about stress, all I can say it was good I was young and carefree because this problem would have surely have killed most people if they were older or had a dodgy heart. It certainly would have killed a lot of entrepreneur’s dreams.
I had no choice but to find an answer to the cabinet problem and there was no way I was giving up especially as I had a ready market for the goods in Australia as well as New Zealand.
One thing I had going for me at the time was my passion and interest in the world of HIFI. I had made a lot of friends with the same interest. We used to all buy, sell and trade high end pieces of equipment with each other. These were the days of vinyl records and tape.

I was lucky enough to meet a person by the name of Terry Flewitt a couple of years before I left Xerox. Terry became a lifelong friend and if it wasn’t for Terry M&K surely would have been a disaster for me.

Terry, his dear wife Joyce and their daughter Valerie had immigrated to New Zealand from the UK some years earlier. Terry and Joyce were real HIFI nuts; they changed their HIFI equipment almost as often as there was a new moon in the sky.
They all had jobs with New Zealand post at the workshops in New market Auckland.

Terry was in charge of the paint shop at the time and he had contacts like you would not believe. If one needed a car painted it could be arranged, if there was an office desk required it could be arranged. Terry was a handy guy to know. In fact when I think back we had all of our initial office furniture, desks, cupboards and chairs built by the NZPO workshops.
One day I was pouring my heart out to Terry about the idiot cabinet makers in New Zealand not willing to attempt building cabinets unless they were conventional.

Not a problem, I was told, we can do it here! All I had to do was purchase the wood and the NZPO boys would do the rest after hours in the woodwork shop.

Within two weeks I received the best built, best looking speaker cabinets anyone could wish for, they were made from beautiful Australian walnut and they were put together by masters at their art.
Paul Edlin had manufactured the crossover units and amplifiers for the Volkswoofer and I set them up and assembled them all myself.
I had arranged delivery of the cardboard cartons from a manufacturer and once again Paul Edlin saved the day by screen printing the cartons to make a truly professional finish to the project.

The testing procedure was basic; no thought had been put into service issues although I decided to provide a five year warranty in line with other manufacturers in New Zealand.

The selling came next and this was where my strengths were, I jumped into the red station wagon and started calling on retailers around the country. I set up the product in their store and because we were starved for any reasonable HIFI product prior to 1987 it was a breeze.
I had orders from Australia from a big Sydney Retail chain called Miranda HIFI. This chain was owned by a real entrepreneur by the name of Peter Gow. I did not find out until later in the piece but he is Eli Macpherson’s father.

All of a sudden the business was under way, we were making loudspeakers, and I had achieved a goal.

The only problem was we were not making any money. I had to really sit down at this stage and think about a few things, I had failed at math, I knew nothing about accounts and bookkeeping and I had little interest in those subjects.

It became apparent there was also a limited market for a satellite subwoofer speaker system that was no doubt ahead of its time and was suffering like crazy in the mid range area.

Another Turning Point for Sound Group Holdings Ltd:

As luck would have it I was in Sydney visiting Peter Gow at one time and he introduced me to Ian Woodhouse. Ian was the managing Director of Electrovoice Australia. Pty Ltd. A fully owned subsidiary of Electrovoice USA.
Electrovoice was a big time commercial and consumer Loudspeaker manufacturer in South Bend Indiana.

Ian told me they had decided to appoint a New Zealand company to manufacture their domestic consumer line in New Zealand for export to Australia.
The International Vice President of Electrovoice was coming out in a few weeks o conclude the deal. It appeared they had made a decision to run with a competitor of ours.

I timidly asked Ian if he had any objection if I approached EV about us putting in a bid for the job. He said to go ahead if I wished but he felt they already had made up their mind.

No sooner than I got back to New Zealand I sent off a telex to the USA asking if we could secure a meeting when the VP arrived in Auckland.

Not long after there was a little embarrassment because we received a telex response by mistake. The USA Company sent a message to their Australian office but it came to our machine instead. It read something like:
Ian,
Surely this is the last remaining manufacturer of loudspeakers in New Zealand!

They had obviously been approached by everyone and even their grandmother!

If I was going to have any chance in securing this opportunity I was going to have to work fast. I had a hell of a lot of competition, very little experience other than a great relationship with NZPO workshops.

This is where the Xerox experience really paid off. The sales training provided by that company was second to none. They taught us how to make professional presentations and I figured the way to secure this was to blow the VP away when he visited. Once they realized they had sent the telex to us by mistake there was no problem arranging a meeting even though there was little chance of securing the deal as I was certain they had already made up their mind.

This was the time to pull out all stops; I worked on a professional proposal outlining my enthusiasm, our experience in Loudspeaker manufacture for export and no doubt a good level of fiction.

The key was to type this up on the best quality paper money could buy, arrange a bound copy with a stunning card back and cover and above all the VP name in gold lettering.

It read something like:

Loudspeaker assemble proposal for Electrovoice Corp USA.

Mr. R Pabst VP International Sales

We were unable to meet bob Pabst at the airport on his arrival as he had already arranged something with one of our competitors.
There was another company close to us who handled the microphones and pro gear for EV and Bob had an appointment with them in the afternoon.
We are able to secure some time after that and we were also able to arrange a dinner appointment together with these EV commercial people.

Naturally I presented the proposal; we took Bob to a professional cabinet maker by the name of Woodpak, headed up by real gentlemen by the name of Wallace Vazey. Woodpak had the equipment to make standard rectangular speaker cabinets from vinyl wrap and do a first class job at a favorable price.

Bob Pabst was very hard to read, we all went out for dinner that evening and I thought it time to close the deal. During the meal I asked him straight out if they would start business with us. I can remember vividly getting a kick from Greg Watson under the table and at that moment Bob got up from the table and announced he would not be railroaded into anything.
He went off to the bathroom in what seemed to be a brassed off mood.

The other guys at the table suggested we back off and just leave him be, this was against my Xerox training however; we were always encouraged to keep on asking for the business.
To everyone’s surprise when Bob returned he quietly sat down and whispered he would give it some thought. This was good enough for me and I thought we were in with a good chance.
Next morning Bob Pabst took a flight to Sydney and met with Ian Woodhouse.

In the afternoon that day I received a phone call from Ian and I could not believe what I heard. “What in the hell did you guys do to Bob”? Ian said on the phone.
You have got the deal!

Apparently Bob got off the aircraft in Sydney and passed two propels to Ian, one was ours, beautifully bound and presented and the other was a six inch square piece of paper with a few figures on it.

Even if our figures were fiction or not the proposal got us the deal.
All of a sudden we were filling containers with Electrovoice interface ones, twos and threes for the domestic market in New Zealand and Australia. We paid EV a royalty for the New Zealand sales and we sent the shipments to Australia with a small profit and attracted a 10%b export subsidy from the Government.

What a blast this was! All of a sudden we were becoming serious about what we were doing, from memory we bought a computer and an invoicing program.
It was not long before things started to slow down, I had sold EV speakers into nearly every retail establishment throughout the country and even though these speakers were extremely efficient and played extremely loud they could not be classified as true HIFI. Neither could be the M&K at that stage.
M&K was really starting to dry up but some extra business turned up when Bennie Gunn, a real icon of New Zealand electronic manufacture from the early days commissioned us to make some subwoofers for Sanyo. Ben was project manager at Sanyo New Zealand and somehow he convinced the powers they should go into the subwoofer manufacturing.
Years before Ben owned a company called Concord Electronics and they made guitar amplifiers and associated electronic devices.
Import restrictions were so difficult in those days Ben even had to manufacture the knobs to go on the amps because knobs were a prohibited import.

To recap, at this time we were assembling M&K Speakers, three models of Electrovoice speakers and Sanyo thirty way powered subwoofers.

EV and M&K were sold in New Zealand and Australia and Sanyo Subwoofers in New Zealand only.

Another turning point:

What happened next was even more extraordinary. One day I visited Frank Curulli at his store in Custom St Auckland.
Frank had been in the Hifi business for some time and he had always supported us by selling our products.

The meeting that day with Frank will always remain fresh in my mind”You need an electronic brand” to go with your speakers he said.
My reaction was “There is nothing available” negative for someone like me.

Frank said, well have you asked? What about Yamaha? They do nothing in this country.
This became a really big deal and I will expand on this later.
Briefly I was able to convince Yamaha Hifi to allow Sound Group Holdings Ltd to assemble their products in New Zealand.

Funnily enough I also remember the day I decided to get out of that business; we were living in the same house. I was backing out of the same driveway this time in a BMW. I was looking into the rear vision mirror and exactly the same feeling came over me as it did that first day twenty years earlier. I did not want to do this any more due to a failing relationship with my business partner.

I just did not want to do it any more. I knew my strength was starting something great and I had the gift of being a visionary, but I was a weak finisher. I easily got bored when things were not moving fast enough for me.

The fun of being in that particular business had long disappeared and I had a seriously degeneration of relationship with my business partner. Greed, power and no direction had crept into our lives, I felt like a boy with a bully as a boss and that is what it was.

We had never made an agreement on what our responsibilities were. I was passionate about selling and saw my role as a director of sales. However it was an impossible job as I had an interfering partner who questioned or changed every move I made. Even though I had started the business I had become the equivalent of a sales rep.

Little did I know the weaving and winding road that would take place from now on?

To be continued