By Guest Poster Michael
Klein
Continuing
my story (last installment July 28, 2020) of a young wet-behind-the-ears school
leaver, navigating a career with a Melbourne office equipment supplier,
servicing all brands of typewriters, but specialising in the Swedish brand
Facit.
One
morning, on arriving at work, my boss, the shop owner and salesman, was in a somewhat
furtive conversation with my supervisor Norm (the senior typewriter technician
and my mentor). I had been at the organisation long enough to know not to
eavesdrop on such conversations, as these were a regular occurrence and were
often dodgy deals being hatched, so I took the hint and disappeared to buy a
cake and drink from the milkbar next door.
On
my return, the boss somewhat sheepishly approached me and asked if I wished to
partake in a week-long technical training course on the new Facit golfball
typewriter about to hit the market. I couldn’t understand what all the cloak
and dagger was about, but with hindsight, I suspect my boss was sounding out
with my supervisor whether I would be technically capable and if it would be worth
the investment in me being off the tools for a week’s training.
Well,
you could have knocked me over with a feather – this training offer was beyond
anything I had been expecting. Not only had my supervisor given me the tick of
approval, which in itself was a huge ego boost, but my boss was giving me the
opportunity to become the “golfball specialist” within the company. My
supervisor was a very old school typewriter mechanic, having come up through the
ranks of what was then almost a full-blown apprenticeship, albeit not a recognised
trade. He nevertheless had spend many years with a company called Sydney Pincombe,
then later with Philips when they bought out Facit. What he didn’t know about
manual and electric Facit typewriters wasn’t worth [type]writing about!
However, golfballs always seemed to be a bit beyond him, or maybe he wasn’t
inclined to want to learn of their intricacies late in his career. I, on the
other hand, was a very enthusiastic young lad at the time, always willing and
eager to learn about new mechanical devices and concepts.
I couldn’t contain my excitement of being there. I may as well have been
starting on a rocket maintenance course, such was the regard I held for these
complex machines that I was to spend the next week playing with. I was also the
youngest chap in the course, which further boosted the sense of self-importance
I felt within myself by being there amongst a group of very experienced
technicians. Many of the course participants went on to become long-term
associates, with one in particular displaying dodgy business practices just like
my current employer (more of this in later installments, no doubt).
June 1978 Australian newspaper ad
The
IBM golfball was regarded in the industry as something quite untouchable, as
IBM had a very tight control of the market for its machine. It was only sold
through their own sales channels, and the spare parts and service literature was
very tightly controlled, making it extremely difficult for small dealerships
such as ourselves to be able to service or repair the complex machines. In fact
IBM behaved in many ways similar to, say, a Mercedes dealership does today by
restricting availability to service manuals, mechanic specialist training and
software diagnostics, so the local mechanic has no hope in being able to
service these cars. It was at this time (around the mid-1970s) that the
worldwide patent on the IBM golfball ran out, allowing all the other
manufacturers to step in and take a slice of a lucrative market. They also had
an advantage in looking back on some 20 years of stifled progress and to be
able to come out with some very innovative approaches to golfball typewriter
designs, by not being shackled to having to keep a flawed design in production
to get return on sunk investment costs. Ford suffered the same fate with the
Model-T car in that they would not, or could not, change the basic design for
decades while new innovations came to market from nimble competitors.
March 1977 United States newspaper ad
Facit
was one of those manufacturers who turned the golfball design on its head,
coming up with a machine that addressed all that was wrong with IBM’s somewhat
tired and dated offering. Many of the parts in the IBM that either broke or
needed constant adjustment, due to inherent poor design, were simply engineered
out of existence due to the new crisp and stylish Swedish design.
During
training, we each had a brand-new machine to play with for a week, under the
guidance of an engineer from the factory in Sweden. Facit had just been bought
out by the multinational Electrolux group, of vacuum cleaner and whitegoods
fame. I spent a week pulling my machine apart and putting it back together and
adjusting it to make it all work again. We had the opportunity during that week
to take apart components that ordinarily wouldn’t have to be disassembled during
the life of the machine. We really got to know the inner workings of those typewriters!
After
the course finished, we all said our goodbyes and went out into the world
equipped with the knowledge to become Facit golfball typewriter experts. To
this young lad, it was a pinnacle of my career path. I was about to embark on
what were, to me, very exciting times.
June 1977 US newspaper ad
The
golfball typewriter was a very expensive item, retailing at around $1800;
considering that an average family-sized car cost around $4000 at the time, this
will place the cost of the typewriter at probably $22,500 in today’s money – a
huge investment for a company, and one usually only made for executive
secretaries. There were very few of these machines sold to home users - they
were almost purely a corporate business tool. There was good markup to be had
on them as well, which led to some very competitive sales tactics amongst the
small fraternity that was the office equipment supply market in those days.
We
had the advantage of having a large number of Facit service contracts, which
also gave us a shoe-in for sales. I suspect that the bulk of the customers we
had on the books came as a result of Philips relinquishing the Facit franchise,
as staff at our shop were ex-Philips employees. Also, a gift to us was that not
many of the other smaller typewriter shops seemed to have anywhere near the range
of Facits under contract as we did, nor did they seem to have a desire to step
into that space, as it was somewhat a niche market compared to IBM and
Remington, who had a huge portion of the market.
I
thoroughly enjoyed the years in which I had the good fortune to work on Facit
typewriters, and in particular my privileged opportunity to specialise in the
Facit golfball. They stood me in good stead when I was to later apply for a job
at Remington, which turned out to be another major turning point in the career
of this naive young lad.
