Roberts Radio : Company history page 4

titles - Company history

Room At The Top

Roberts and Bidmead moved into Hills Place on 22 October 1932, and continued to concentrate on portable receivers. From the outset they adopted a business philosophy that Harry had absorbed from his father: make a top-quality product and sell it to top-quality customers. The first of these objectives was primarily Leslie's responsibility, the second entirely Harry's. Lacking any means of direct access to his desired customers, but lacking nothing in self-confidence, he took a sample receiver to Harrods and asked to see the buyer of the Piano department, which at that time handled wireless sets. It says much for Harry's personality that, barely into his twenties, he persuaded the buyer to hear a demonstration, and much for Leslie's design that Harry left with an order for half a dozen sets, thereby beginning a most fruitful association. Orders from other leading department stores followed, and the little company was on its way. During their first year production averaged under three receivers a week, and turnover was just £1,557. They could not afford to hold stocks of receivers, so orders were executed as they came in, and both partners would often work through the night to meet delivery dates.

However, they did not feel obliged to stay tied to Hills Place if a promising opportunity offered elsewhere. On one occasion a hotel-keeper from Rock, in Cornwall, offered them not just a sale but a free weekend's stay if they could demonstrate a portable receiver giving satisfactory reception there. Confident that they could do so, and tempted by the prospect of a few days off, they accepted the challenge and motored down to Rock. The receiver performed admirably, and they were unexpectedly able to make the visit even more profitable by purchasing on their host's behalf a new refrigerator and a new set of large accumulators for his lighting plant.

On 18 November 1932 the partners changed their company's name from "Roberts and Bidmead" to the more euphonious "Roberts Radio Company", and subsequently persuaded two young sisters to change their names from "Hayward" to "Roberts" and "Bidmead"; Harry and Doris were married in 1933, Leslie and Elsie in 1935. Nor did the Hayward family's involvement end there. The girls' elder brother Percy acted as the Company's accountant for over thirty years, and the husband of a third sister designed the distinctive "Aladdin's Lamp" loudspeaker-grille used in many of the pre-war models.

Doris worked for a firm that produced stationery and advertising matter for Rolls Royce, and soon "Roberts Radio" too was being die-stamped onto parchment, though the Company was still very small; turnover for 1935 was only about £3400, which did not afford its owners much scope for high living.

After her day's work, Doris would sometimes go into the factory and wind frame aerials — that way she at least saw something of Harry in the evenings. Elsie Bidmead owned a sewing machine, and was given the job of making webbing loops, one of which was supplied with each set to enable the snugly fitting H.T. battery to be withdrawn from the cabinet.

Production during 1935 averaged about eight receivers per week, which was approaching the maximum attainable at the Hills Place premises. Sales were still confined to the London area, so there was clearly potential for expansion by moving into larger premises and distributing nationwide, and in March 1936 the Company moved a few hundred yards to Rathbone Place, where they occupied three rooms on each of two floors. The year brought another event of significance when, on 2 July, Doris Roberts gave birth to a son, Richard, destined to succeed his father as Chairman and Managing Director.

The Company still undertook the occasional "one-off" job, as when Roberts and Bidmead were invited by a rich "city" man, with the memorable name of E. Beddington Behrens, to visit him and discuss an unspecified commission. When they arrived at his palatial apartment he asked them to sit down, then went to the piano and, to their bewilderment, began to play and sing "You, you're driving me crazy". After several choruses, a radio was turned on very loudly in the next flat; explaining that this often happened without provocation, Behrens announced "Your job, gentlemen, is to beat that!". The challenge was accepted, and Roberts Radio duly supplied him with an instrument incorporating a high-power amplifier and a large loudspeaker. The experience gained no doubt came in useful when the Company subsequently designed and manufactured a rack-mounted amplifier/receiver for Surrey County Hospital.

By 1936 the Company was promoting its receivers as "the finest of all portables". They were not yet reviewed in the technical press, so this claim cannot be judged against an independent assessment, but it was probably well founded. Because they refused to cast the portable in the role of poor relation within the radio family, Roberts and Bidmead were prepared to put into their sets the quantity and quality of components necessary to ensure good performance, and because the circuit techniques involved were fairly straightforward this philosophy may well have outweighed the greater technological resources of larger companies.

Early Roberts receivers were mostly in the traditional "suitcase" format, with loudspeaker and frame aerial in the lid. This was well-suited to the moving-iron loudspeakers commonly used in the early 1930s, and when these were superseded by moving-coil speakers of smaller cone-diameter the size of the cabinet was scaled down, in models such as the M4 (1934). However, for the M4Q, launched in 1937, the Company went over to an "upright" formal, which was to be used in numerous models over the next twenty years. As well as taking up less space when in use than a suitcase model of the same nominal size, it was also cheaper to construct, avoided movement of connecting wires, and was easier to provide with a turntable for exploiting the directivity of the frame aerial. The Company's faith in its potential for expansion proved to be fully justified. During the first year at Rathbone Place (1936/37) turnover almost doubled, to about £6,400.

To achieve this, production had to be more than doubled, since competition and technical progress combined to reduce the average retail price of a Roberts receiver from 11 gns to 9 gns. Three companies were appointed to distribute outside the southeast, each on a different basis: the Midlands and North of England were covered by J. D. Morrison of Manchester, acting as Manufacturers' Agents; the Scottish distributors, Caldwell Young, were contracted to handle no other make of radio; and the West of England was covered by a radio wholesaler, Silcocks Brothers (Bristol) Ltd. These connections endured for some thirty years, being terminated only when a direct sales force was appointed. On 23 April 1937 Roberts Radio became a Private Limited Company, with Roberts and Bidmead as directors and a capital of £3,000, of which £1,000 was paid up. Turnover for 1937/8 was up by about 15%, at £7,400, and 1938/39 saw a spectacular increase to £13,500.