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Ron Levett, born in Alfriston, East Sussex, enlisted in 1943, and whilst posted to the British Liberation Army, took part in the liberation of Germany. He then returned to England, setting up his own electronics business and developing an interest in the new entertainment of the time - television.
In the early sixties television rental was just beginning. This was popular because of the unreliability of the TV sets at this time. Even when a set was brand new out of it's box it was very unlikely to work, and had to be repaired before resale.
In a delivery of ten sets, half would be unusable. They were all valve models, which ran very hot, causing soldered joints to become 'dry'. The valves were connected in series, so that their heaters added up to around 150 volts.
The remaining voltage was dissipated through a large wire-wound resistor. This ran at a very high temperature, was prone to burn out, and could burn a hole in the back cardboard panel of the set.
We discovered that the large retailers in Eastbourne and Hailsham were not very interested in rental, and found we had an opportunity to install sets in quite large numbers, considering our firm's small size.
When we went to the radio show in London, we ordered fifty sets from Invicta Radio. This was one of Pye Radio's subsidiaries. Most of the big firms at this time were very conscious of their image and would only give agencies to larger established retailers.
Firms like Bush, Murphy, and Dynatron etc. were very difficult to obtain. These names bear no relationship to the present days firms with the same names. Invicta sets could, however be bought through wholesalers. We managed to get bigger discounts by buying direst from Invicta.
We were approached by another subsidiary of Pye Ltd called United Rentals. They had also spotted a niche in the market. Small firms such as ours had insufficient finance to go into rental in a big way.
We could buy our sets from the wholesaler or direct. The when we had installed the set, we forwarded a copy of the rental agreement to United Rentals. They would then pay us the retail value of the set, which became their property for four years.
We would maintain the set during this time, paying the rentals to United Rentals. At the end of the four years the set would revert to us and we would keep the rental money. This worked very well and we soon built up quite a rental business.
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