The whole area around the City of London, from Middlesex Street to City Road, had importers of ‘fancy goods’. Things like transistor radios and high-intensity lamps fell into this category. However, most of the importers were effectively selling the same stuff, just branded differently. Some importers, such as East West – again run by an Asian family, the Shahwanis – sold rather more up-market technical goods. Fronting for them was a gaunt-looking gentleman called Peter Jones, their sales manager.

Around this time, I became aware that all these importers had brand names. Gulu had Binatone (Bina being the name of his sister); others I bought from had names like Vantone and Fantavox. It was a prestige thing – it gave you a kind of credibility with the retailers. If nothing else, it was a statement that you must definitely be the importer.

Most of the time, traders like me wanted to make sure we weren’t buying off a middleman. You knew you were buying from a middleman if the diamond-shaped panel had been cut out of the shipping carton. Every importer had its name printed in that panel, so that the dockers could recognise the batches of cargo. If you saw ‘J PARKER’ printed in the diamond, then you knew the stuff had come from Gulu. So if you didn’t want the next guy to know where the goods had come from, you cut out the diamond.

I decided that I would use my own brand name on some products, even though I bought them from an importer. I came up with the name ‘Amstrad’, from A M S Trading. My first Amstrad-branded product was 1,000 gas cigarette lighters, bought from an importer by the name of Ezra Elias, who was just round the corner from Gulu’s gaff.