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Question
What happened?
Answer
Long story. Subjective traded first from our small flat in Palmers Green (North London) from October 1976. Our first suppliers were Meridian, Gale, Lecson, Lentek, Fidelity Research, Micro Seiki, Michaelson/Austin and Michell Engineering. Quite quickly we became the most successful representatives of all of those famous brands. We moved to our current house in Palmers Green in 1980 and quickly became the UK’s most successful representatives for Krell, Magneplanar, Oracle and Apogee too.
We had no high street presence. We became known for quirky advertising and eccentric friendliness ñ and that led to word-of-mouth, and it just grew and grew.
If a demonstration coincided with our family lunch or dinner, the potential customer was invited to join us. Invariably they did. If Play-Away was on television and my children wanted to watch it, we paused the demonstration to let the children view their programme and when it finished, the children left and the demonstration picked up where we left off. Our demo room was our living room, and vice-versa!
Things were looking rosy. It should have been sufficient. However I insisted we move the business to lavish (recklessly extravagant really) custom built showrooms at the south end of Camden Town, a stone’s throw away from Mornington Crescent tube station. I thought I could walk on water and somewhat unfortunately, others thought so too. So how could it fail?
Anyway, a grand opening in 1982 actually, although none of us knew it at the time heralded the demise of Subjective. The sales grew and grew and so did the apparent success story. Still the biggest for Meridian, Krell, Michell, TDL, Beard, Pink Triangle and so on. Number 4 for Linn, etc. How could it fail?
Behind the scenes though a rot was setting in due to a combination of over-ambition on my part, increasing sales and unsustainable overheads. Worse than this, my commercial inexperience was making matters bad. It couldn’t last like that.
Retreating to lick wounds, although financially solvent, we relocated to fresh premises in Palmers Green having sold Camden. It was however too little, too late and as my staff who had been utterly loyal (as indeed had the customers) began to find new employment I found myself one morning completely on my own, surrounded by magnificent equipment ñ and memories ñ and debts.
On that morning a destructive legal document from one of my largest and my first supplier arrived and, well, that was it really. No stomach left to fight on.
Another naive decision, but this time the right one I think. I deliberately chose not to go down the bankruptcy route although strongly advised to do so. Possibly I was naive, but I was holding customer deposits and it just didn’t seem right. I closed the doors after the final customer got the final piece of equipment they were owed.
The future was very bleak indeed and without the strength of my wife Christine, personal friends, friends of the company and, strange to relate our bankers who gave me a hassle-free 12 months to clear the six-figure debt, the outcome might well have been shorter, dramatic and very different.