Remember the Typewriters
Greedy Salesman
1987
In the mid 1980’s I ran a retail service type business. One of my suppliers was Xerox Corp. They had a surplus supply of IBM Selectric Typewriters that they wanted to get rid of. We were good customers of Xerox so I bought 20 of them and put one on the shelf of my shop with a price. I paid $200/ each, and sold them for $500. Retail price was close to $1000.
These were state of the art at the time. The sales rep told me that they were used by the army because they were so quiet. He didn’t tell me that the Selectric Model Typewriters were modified by the Russians for spying on the US in the late 1970’s to mid 1980’s… (https://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/selectric/)
They sold well. I hadn’t advertised that I had them for sale, other than word of mouth. I told my accountant, and they bought a couple. A few customers came in, saw them and purchased them one at a time.
One day a realtor customer came in and saw the typewriters in boxes in a corner. He said, “Our office is looking for some typewriters. I’ll send our purchasing manager over to check them out”. Thanks, I said.
Larry came over a while later, checked the machines and asked about reliability. I told him that they were brand new from Xerox, and would be warrantied and fixed by them if there were any issues.
“OK, Larry said, we’ll take 5 of them“.
Me: “500 dollars plus tax times 5 is $2625. All in.”
Larry: “Tax?”
Me: “Well we have to claim them as a sale for the shop, and everything has tax”.
Larry: “OK, I’ll talk it over with my boss”.
Me: “Thanks, we’ll talk soon.”
Nice. Easy $1500.
Larry called back a couple of hours later with some disturbing news. He ordered 5 typewriters directly from Xerox, who sold them to him for the same cost as I paid for them.
I was a little upset at Xerox, but more upset with myself for not negotiating a discount during our earlier conversation, to offset his tax concerns.
To this day, when I feel a bit greedy in business, I remind myself to Remember the typewriters!
Why Michael A. Covington likes a Selectric:
Besides reliability, versatility, and high print quality, the Selectric is fast.
The inherent speed of the Selectric is more than 15 characters per second, and it has one keystroke of mechanical "stroke storage." That is, if you hit two keys very close together, the first one and the second one will both actuate, each in due time. This is accomplished by having each key release an "interposer," which is allowed to go down when the mechanism is ready for it.
The interposer is the component with binary-coded tabs on it that I mentioned earlier. If more than two interposers go down at the same time, you have a slight risk of a jam, which can be cleared by pressing Mar Rel. But few typists are that clumsy”. (…source)
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Thanks for reading. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Share your “typewriter“ lesson.
Peace in Ukraine ✌️