Angus the Englishman

In 1971 I met this Englishman named Angus. He was a real ambitious go-getter. He said being I knew a lot of tailors in Hong Kong we should contact them and start importing their suits. I love it when people say “we should”, what they really mean is why don’t you, meaning me. Angus was above that type of person however and when I told him that I didn’t save their addresses and phone numbers, he just shrugged. When I saw him on the very next day, he produced a Hong Kong Yellow Pages, truth be told, in Hong Kong the business phone directory is the Pink Pages. When I asked him where he got the book, he told me that he had gone to the Hong Kong consulate And asked for one and he was simply handed a copy.

I had remembered the names of the tailor shops that I had used in Hong Kong and so I wrote them and told them that we wanted to represent them in SoCal. I received via airmail a few days later style books and material swatches.

We could buy suits from Hong Kong for $30 USD. We could get 3 custom made shirts for $10 and custom made shoes also for $10. We had to measure the customer like real tailors and tell the tailors what material was desired and also what style number out of the style book. Our sell price was $100 which was a tidy profit for us and a deal for the customers. FYI the Chinese tailors pride themselves as being the best in the world and their clothes are simply beautiful. We sold the three shirts for $45 and the shoes for $50. We would have the customer stand on a piece of light cardboard and trace their foot and then trace their other foot on the flip side of the cardboard. We would tell the tailors what kind of leather, or suede, the customer wanted and include a picture of the style of shoe by including a photo clipped out of a magazine such as Playboy or Esquire. Shipping costs were extra and could be shipped by mail or air express.

We then branched out into other endeavors. The next was addressing machines. Angus’ day job was selling addressing machines. His cheapest machine was about $200 and the top of the line machine was about $650. The $200 machine was a hand cranked model that had to be plugged in to kick the address cards through. The $650 number looked just like the cheapy but was all electric. When I took the side cover off of the two machines they were almost identical inside. For about $75 I could mount a motor to the pre-drilled holes and put on two sprockets and a ladder chain and we had a $650 machine to sell. We got a cease and desist letter  in the mail which we ignored. A few weeks later two guys showed up at our office and asked if Angus was around. I told them he wasn’t and didn’t know where he was or when he would be back. After they left, I called Angus up and told him two cops came in and were looking for him. He asked me if they showed me their badges and I said no. He wanted to know why I thought that they were cops and I told him that I knew a cop when I saw one. About an hour later the two gents came back and showed me their FBI credentials. The ID was signed by J Edger Hoover and I asked if their IDs were valid. They asked me what was I talking about and blew a fuse when I asked “Isn’t he dead”. They then asked me if I would try to contact Angus. I said I’d try and so I called Angus back and told him they were back. He asked me to put one of the guys on the phone and I told one of them to pick up an extension phone. I stayed on the listen and heard Angus ask them if they had a warrant. They said no they didn’t have one and Angus then yelled into the phone “Then get out of my fu#@ing store. We never heard from the Feds again. Things were going well and before long we got into the direct mail business. We bought a Phillipsburg envelope inserter machine. This mechanical monster could insert four different pieces of mail into an envelope at about 3500 pieces per hour. Our largest customer was an educational film company that was a division of  Columbia Pictures. We had the names and addresses of every middle and high school teacher in the USA. The list was separated by subject. One list for math teachers another for English teachers another for science teachers. The lists were very complete and comprehensive. Each teacher’s subject utilized different inserts according to the subject.

One day we had an emergency meeting with the educational company. The type setter missed a very important feature of their first class postage return cards. “Junk mail” goes out postage paid third class mail. We would bundle all of the mail going to a certain zip code with rubber bands. The bundle wouldn’t be opened until it arrived at it’s post office.  This saved the post office a lot of the handling and also saved the mailer, us, a ton of money. When the prospective was finally opened, the mail carriers would then deliver the advertisements. The return path is somewhat different. A customer checks off his interests and puts the bingo card back into the mail. The postage return cards come back to the advertiser as first class mail. The post office bundles up the reply cards and if there are 100 reply cards in the bundle and if first class postage is 47 cents there is $47 postage due. The office pays the postage due and the mailman gives them the bundle. The reason for this lengthy dissertation is this. The way the sorters at the US Mail know a card is first class postage return is there are eight bars printed under the permit. The cards come whizzing by at a speed faster then they can be read but the bars can still be discerned.

There were one million cards with no bars and it would take weeks to send them back to the printers, get them corrected and get them back. We did the only honorable thing and offered to buy a used printing press and print bars. At a profit of course. We located a used ATF Chief offset press. I learned how to print bars and kept ahead of the mailings and we were heroes. In addition to all of the other tasks we had we were now in the printing business.

Not that we didn’t have enough on our plates we also went into the mail order vitamin business. We ran an ad in the classified ads in the back of the   LA Times Sunday Magazine. The orders came rolling in. We had a private label vitamin company  in Texas and had to put on more people to fill the orders.

As it is said, all good things must come to an end. I walked into the office one fine morning and EVERYTHING was GONE. The inserting machine, the printing press, the type setting gear, the desks. EVERYTHING. The phones were sitting on the floor and the unmailed stock was in the storeroom. It took me a few weeks to find out that Angus had sold EVERYTHING in the middle of the night and have it hauled away. I found out from his estranged wife that he also had grabbed his two kids and blew town with them.

It will be a cold day in hell before I get involved in a business partnership again.