THE1950s
0113 G&M Chemicals
The biggest ‘moneymaking’ operation my father was involved in was G&M Chemicals. This started because my father's department at Prices used oleyl-cetyl alcohol, which the workers found relieved their aches-- and rheumatism in general. It seemed a miracle cure, albeit a rather smelly one.
My father, who had been a chemist earlier in his life, proceeded to spend many months formulating a much more agreeable product -- which was easily absorbed through the skin. Ultimately the oleyl-cetyl alcohol was emulsified with soap (in fact the commercial Shell detergent Teepol) and a range of other products, mainly designed to make it seem to work immediately. Thus it had methyl nicotinate to make the skin develop a warm glow, so that the ‘patient’ thought something was happening! I though found I was allergic to this and came out in a rash. It also had a nice refreshing smell of pine. All of this was a lesson in production technology for me, with samples of products coming in from all over the country to be tested!
Of course we had to have a businessman to run it, and Uncle Bill reckoned he was just ideal for the job. He certainly should have been experienced in terms of marketing -- and sometimes was. Watching him make his mistakes was probably one of the reasons I later fell in love with Economics, since it showed me what he should have done!
We rented the disused stables at the back of a large house in Rock Ferry. It proved to be very hard work turning these into a factory. They were absolutely filthy, but we eventually cleaned the dirt down to a level where it was just about tolerable. The office, out in the yard, is where we kept the records -- though my mother did most of the office work at home. The upper part of stables was used for storing the packaging and the lower part was the production area. My father used to buy a drum of the oleyl-cetyl alcohol. As it was a solid at room temperature, he then had to warm it, until it melted, by the side of our kitchen fire -- before we rushed down to Rock Ferry to get it into production. All the ingredients were then blended in an old boiler which previously been used for washing clothes. We then transferred it to the most expensive bit of equipment, the homogenizer which squeezed it into a stable mousse. Finally came the job of filling the tubes, folding them and crimping them; and putting them in the packaging all of which was done by hand.
My uncle decided to call the products Analglo, and bought packaging to match this. In our innocence we never thought about what this might mean, and it was only at the last-minute that one of his contacts pointed out the obvious. The product name was changed to Anaglo and new packaging bought -- which was as well since the previous packaging had been rubbish. We ended up with quite nice packaging - grey and red - and a nicely printed leaflet. We also produced a doctor's only version; Embrocol.
Bill actually did do some selling and indeed sold several hundred boxes of a dozen-tubes each. The best deal he found was to get into Boots north western region, on a trial basis. I remember spending days wrapping display outers full of tubes, to send to most of the branches round of the North West.
Unfortunately Bill soon lost interest and the whole thing stagnated; though the doctors version kept going for quite a long time.
The problem was that Bill was ever chasing after new ventures. That's why we then started selling soap solutions to the local factories, based on the Teepol synthetic detergent we used as the emulsifier. Bill would buy a 40 gallon drum, and we would break this into smaller quantities. Then we got into selling anti-freeze in a similar way. Finally, he got us involved in making tow ropes for lorries, and I well remembering sewing heavy steel tow ropes in sacking before taking them down the local rail terminal for shipment.
Bill was ever the dilettante, he could never stay with anything. When he died in his wife found that he was bankrupt, owing tens of thousands of pounds. Fortunately she managed to avoid responsibility for this, but his death was typical of his life!
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