The Early Days of a Career
I started my first job in the family business on May 1st, 1975, 50 years ago, but actually my first experience of business went back even further.
In late 1962, the fair had just been to town and some delighted schoolchildren had won a goldfish at one of the stalls. However, many hadn’t and I saw a business opportunity!
Utilising my parents’ newly built goldfish pond and the Bank of Dad to fund the venture, I had an instant source of goldfish for friends who wanted to buy one.
However, I hadn’t anticipated the Big Freeze of 1962/63 that rapidly turned the goldfish pond into a two foot by six foot ice cube (we hadn’t discovered centimetres in the 60s).
Regrettably, my entire stock was soon more frozen than a Captain Birdseye fish finger.
In retrospect, my knowledge of fish husbandry was clearly inadequate, my attitude to animal welfare was cavalier by modern standards and my cashflow projections had inadequate contingency plans.
In my defence, the business failed due to what the insurance companies call force majeure, and I was only seven years old.
Undeterred by this first failure (a sure sign of either an entrepreneur or a Pollyanna), my next – more successful – venture was t-shirt printing.
The availability of graphic design transfers, which could be applied rapidly to new garments using a commercially available press, seemed an obvious opportunity. I was just out of university, so I knew my market, and the venture was moderately successful.
I even had a design commissioned. It linked an image from the petrolhead community (a tribe of which I remain an active member) and a circumstance with which students are often familiar. It showed a piston from a car engine, snapped in two, and read ‘Piston Broke’.
Gaining Experience of the World of Business
After university, I joined the family business. Over a period of about 30 years, this allowed me to run, manage, observe, explore, invest in or be party to a range of business activities that included building and property investment, satellite TV, video games, pool tables and jukeboxes, business card printing machines, export packaging, CNC machining, craft stamps and associated accessory distribution, a wine bar and a children’s clothes shop.
There were many highlights during this period, but this is a blog, not a book, so here are just a few.
In the late 1970s, I was introduced to a coin-operated video game in a small showroom in Swiss Cottage, London.
It was the original Space Invaders and, at the time, it was the only one in the UK.
Although Atari Pong (an onscreen representation of ping pong) was the first game to gain global recognition, it was too simple and could be mastered easily.
By contrast, Space Invaders was the first game that became harder as you progressed so the challenge built to match the player’s skill.
Within a few months, we were buying 15 units a week to install in pubs in the South of England.
In 1979, I flew to Tokyo to attend a games exhibition where Galaxian (the first full-colour commercial video game) was launched. Less than a fortnight later, I flew to Chicago for the equivalent exhibition and saw the launch of Asteroids.
Both were iconic games at the time and formed the launchpad for today’s video gaming industry.
During my visit to Tokyo, I discovered two ideas that I thought were too oriental to ever catch on in the West: Karaoke and table-top video games. Well, you can’t be right all the time! 🤦
In 1984, we opened Reuben Langford’s Wine Bar & Buttery, Salisbury’s first-ever wine bar.
My brother oversaw the successful day-to-day operation for a couple of years. It became popular and established a good local reputation through word-of-mouth recommendations (no Tripadvisor in those days).
During this period, I was once introduced at a drinks party as “This is Guy Osmond. His brother runs a wine bar”. This was the point in my life when I decided to set my career objectives rather higher than being related to someone who had done something.
We sold the wine bar operation to a former QE2 purser.
In the mid-1990s, another brother returned from a Sabbatical in California.
In San Francisco, he had discovered a new sector that had evolved traditional rubber stamps (as used for dating documents) into a craft activity with thousands of designs and an array of accessories.
Before long, we were designing and manufacturing the rubber stamps alongside an import and distribution operation for the accessories.
This business was subsequently sold to a company looking to expand into the craft sector from the traditional business market.
Some of the Inca Stamp designs are still available online today.
Gaining Traction
Meanwhile, pursuing another opportunity, we had been talking to Salisbury NHS Trust about a sloping computer workstation designed and developed in the Rehab Unit.
After some months of negotiation, we finally developed a more commercial version that we could manufacture in-house.
We launched this at the Safety & Health Exhibition at Olympia in late 1992, with a follow-up at the RoSPA exhibition at the NEC in Spring 1993.
Of course, this was around the launch of the original DSE Regulations, and there was plenty of commercial interest.
In time for the RoSPA event, we added a monitor stand and two footrests, all using the same basic MFC and the sort of KD fixings you find in kitchen cabinets.
Whilst we had all the woodworking machinery we needed, we had never used chipboard and had never done edge-banding. The second-hand edge-banding machine we purchased either didn’t heat the glue enough or overheated it and melted the plastic edging.
We probably ran through a few kilometres of edging material before we mastered the skill and, for the NEC event, we ran out of time and resorted to iron-on edging purchased from a nearby DIY store!
Despite this, we had enquiries from London Electricity and Boots the Chemist and the ergonomics business was on its way.
Finding The Niche
For the last 30+ years, my primary focus has been ergonomics activities.
During that period, the majority of our business has related to supporting individual UK office workers with musculoskeletal issues but we have also been equipping home workers for over a decade and have supplied products to every continent at one time or another.
Key product highlights include introducing the central pointing device (roller mouse) to the UK, promoting early adoption of laptop stands, and launching the DXT – the first truly ambidextrous vertical mouse.
We have also been selling Sit & Stand desks for about 20 years: long before the ‘sitting is the new smoking’ slogan appeared.
Meanwhile, whilst I have always vowed never to be a manufacturer, the family connection has ensured I have been adjacent to or invested in a variety of products and processes, many made on the same site as the ergonomics operation.
These have included export packaging from small boxes to lorry-sized crates, tote trays for just-in-time automotive manufacturing, protective cases for precision instruments, carbon fibre modules for Formula 1 teams, structural elements for superyachts, blade components for wind turbines and, most recently, a fascinating array of 3D-printed products in a stunning variety of raw materials.
Expanding The Niche
In the ergonomics world, I have been promoting the connection between mental and physical health since the recession of 2008.
This has become a central element of the global wellbeing conversation in recent years.
At a time when I should probably be squeezing as much profit as possible out of the business and into my pension, I am still investing heavily in new developments and our latest Osmond Ergonomics & Wellbeing website goes live in the week I celebrate 50 years in full-time employment.
As time progresses, I find the connections between wellbeing, engagement and corporate culture ever more fascinating and enjoy frequent conversations about the interplay of ergonomics, neurodiversity, mental and physical health, sleep, acoustics, biophilia, lighting, space, texture and colour in the workplace context.
As you may have surmised, I have a very low boredom threshold, and I have been extraordinarily fortunate to have pursued so many avenues (and quite a few dead ends!) over the last fifty years.
My advice to anyone starting off in business today? Unless you know you have a vocation – try to experience as much as possible.
Try different environments and industries; different sizes of company; different markets. Stay curious – because curiosity creates a ‘What If’ mentality from which creativity springs. And Be adventurous. What’s the worst that can happen? You lose a few goldfish. And what’s the best? You create something meaningful and leave an impact in the world.