“Club”

During the 37 years I spent with Derann, Derek had many weird and wonderful ideas for brand new sales lines or promotions to help garner further sales. He was generally on the ‘mark’ but not always, as with the vast quantity of GAF View-Masters we had lying around for so many years. During 1979 it was a small range of Derann T shirts and sweat shirts, they were nothing fancy, but they sold out quicker than we could have ever anticipated! However we never repeated the range! When we first began printing Film For The Collector magazine, subscription automatically enrolled you into the ‘Club’ and each month there were a number of specials on offer to club only members. This caused an hiatus with many customers, who felt it was unfair they couldn’t take advantage of the offers!! We dropped the offers and organised a cheap day trip, for members only to Bradford and the Imax cinema at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, now known as the National Media Museum. A coach was hired and the day went down well with all the members who came along. If I remember correctly the Imax screen was the only one of it’s type at the time. Do you recall the second wave of Derann clothing? More sweat shirts and a nice looking tie along with a Derann key ring and badge! Yes badges, they sold well and steadily for many years. When Derek went to the USA for a holiday, he returned with a selection of badges he’d purchased from a shop, while on the Warner Brothers Studio Tour in Hollywood – yes Warner Brothers badges! Dave Worrall saw the possibilities immediately and after a phone call to the Warners offices in the states he made his first order. We had several, to choose from, a WB shield badge, a WB shield badge with Sylvester, Bugs and friends peering over the top and a key ring with the same design, a Bug Bunny badge and a Sylvester badge. We sold out within 4 weeks! We had several repeat orders with Warners in America before they informed us that the current order would have to be the last, as they were about to launch the Warner Brothers stores in the UK. So the range came to a halt but not before we’d sold well over 3,000 assorted units! Vinyl Soundtracks was another avenue we tried but this was a trickier path, one never knew what was going to sell and what was going to sit on the shelf and it was only natural that we would also move into CD soundtracks as a matter of course. Posters, publicity and stills were another sideline and one that actually sold well, without too many problems. But every time we tried a new range, it generally meant a new member of staff and if the sales didn’t cover the wage then eventually it was dropped. Laser Discs, The RCA CED discs, DVD, Blu-rays and HD DVD we sold them all at one time or another, we even tried a range of ‘white’ goods, that’s washing machines, fridges, microwaves etc. Finally, an item that many of you may recall is the belting. Projector belts had become somewhat of a sob story, we were having problems finding supplies for almost every projector on the market. Duncan was miffed at the number of customers we turned away and searched the Internet and found a local firm who sold ‘belting material’ for industrial uses. If a customer was prepared to spend a few pounds to practice the method of joining the ends together, they really did make excellent substitute belts.