Diamonds and Flashing Trophies-- Part three

     Corey's lifelong friend Ky is a bright young man. He was also a student of mine at one time.

     He designed a new trophy. Not just any trophy, but one with 7 different, flashing and rolling lighting patterns in the column. Like none other. He needed a partner. A person with a strong sales and business background, someone he could trust. My son Corey fit the ticket.

     The next job was to find someone who could actually build such a thing, inexpensively. After much looking, He finally located a company in China who said they could do it. They did. They shipped Ky a small load to approve.

     Corey and Ky gave me some of them to go over, look for problem areas. They worked well, but I did discover a problem. A few of them seemed to have a weak switch. When pressed, the switch just sometimes broke loose inside. Taking it apart, I saw the switch was glued into place. Sometimes, those with less glue just gave way.

     I called Ky, explained the problem. That switch just needed to be reworked. The switch issue was resolved, we thought. Corey and Ky, just sure they were onto the next "big thing," ordered a shipping container load. They are both very big thinkers. Financing became a problem, and they offered Barbara and me 20% interest in the company if we backed their loan. Not a thing characteristic of us, we did. After Dad's Great Depression days, he made a family rule, one I had always followed to that point. A Gillum never signs anyone else's note. But, this seemed like a sure hit.

     When the container load arrived, and boxes were stacked in a warehouse, we went to inspect. The stacks and rows of boxed trophies seemed to stretch on forever.

     We opened a box, and started testing.  The earlier batch had been shipped in the summertime. Only a few failed. This container load had been shipped in the winter. The glue must have gotten very cold on that long voyage.

     One switch failed. And the next. And another. Somehow, in the communication between Me, Ky, and China, the seriousness of the problem was not fully understood. They had not remolded the plastic column, providing a solid backing, but had added more glue, and tested a great deal. But they obviously had not taken into account the effect of the cold. Apparently, warm glue holds better that cold. We were looking at 22,500 non-functional trophies.

     The International Trophy Show, in Las Vegas, was in March. It was late December. We had  two months to straighten this mess out.

     Ky negotiated with the Chinese for days, but from a position of weakness. They had our money.

Shipping them back was not an option for them. That was the major expense. Them sending a team of workers over was discussed.

     Then we got to thinking. If they could repair them, we could too. We had a second generation trophy, still on the drawing boards. We could not afford it at this time, for this year's Trophy Show.

     If they could redesign the switch correctly, build the larger trophies, and ship them all for free to us in exchange for their switch messup, We could come out ahead. If we repaired the stock in hand. A very big IF.

     China went for it, very anxious to please us, and keep theirselves in position for much profit when the really big orders came in. The deal was sealed.

     Figuring out just how to repair this mountain of trophies fell upon me.

     For days I tried one idea after another. Reheating worked, but after a night in the freezer we were back in the same boat. Finally, I discovered that if I took the trophy out of its box, took the batteries out and put a very short screw into the bottom of the battery case at exactly the right place, it could be tightened up against the back of the switch, and hold it firmly in place. It worked!

     But it was slow. It would take a virtual army of men to repair all these by March. Then it hit me. Or, perhaps, a single family of working machines. I called Henry Emison.

     He was not really busy now, and they could use some Christmas money. We agreed upon 25 cents each, we haul and pick up. Finished by March.

     Corey and I went shopping. 22,500 screws, just the right length. A handful of Dremmel tools, drill bits and screw drivers. The next problem was to get that mass of boxes to Gurdon. My friend, Bud Reeder, loaned his truck and large trailer.

     Hooking that very heavy trailer up one morning, I strained a little too hard. On the way to Little Rock, my vision in one eye started going crazy. I was seeing little sperm shaped black things, swimming all around in my vision in that eye. It continued. Unloading the trophies later that day, I called my friend Frank Teed, a well known eye doctor. His team was out of town that day, but he said meet him at his office when he returned. And, don't lift another box. My frient Tyrone was helping me unload. I was glad, but he was sad, when I told him he had to do the rest of the unloading alone.

     Frank's team were all there waiting for me when I arrived after hours. Nice to have good friends in important places. The verdict was my retina was tearing loose. After a specialist welded it back with a laser the next morning we continued hauling trophies. 

     A warehouse in Arkadelphia was rented. We shuttled the boxes to Henry, and we all shuttled them back to the warehouse when repaired.

     This is not a part of this story, but a neat thing, so bear with me. Hauling the empty trailer back from Gurdon one day, a large deer almost hit my trailer, which was at least 3 feet tall. When I looked into the rear view mirror, all I could see was the bottom of it's feet. It jumped clean over my trailer!

     As it turned out, Henry had young and grown children who were also hard workers. Lori has the same work ethic as Henry. Before March rolled around, they were all repaired and in our warehouse.

     Next came the big show. The Chinese had made good on their delivery of the larger trophies. They were perfect. Corey, Ky, and wives Christi and Teresa headed to Las Vegas, to the International Trophy Show, loaded for bear.

     We got the call late one night from Las Vegas. Our trophy had just been named "Best new trophy of the year!" We rejoyced. We were about to all be rich!

     Now the ball was in Corey's court. Two of the trophy industry's largest suppliers wanted to buy us out. We knew we had to sell, now, while it was hot. We did not have the money to market it ourselves, on this large scale. Offers flew back and fourth.

     Finally, a large company in South Dakota offered what we decided was our best deal. A nice royalty on future sales, and they would buy all our existing stock, our repaired trophies. They sent a big truck to Arkadelphia to pick them up. They wanted their own suppliers from China to build 100,000 more, but their suppliers could not figure out how to build it. They made a deal with our company in China.

     When the trophy appeared in the catalog that fall, they used the entire back cover promoting it. The company reported the dealers just loved it, and orders were flying off the shelves. After the dealers got stocked up, we held our breath to see how the public would react.

     It was not good. The trophy seemed to fall into a void between very cheap participation trophies and more expensive, larger trophies. The public was just not as excited as we, and the dealers, were. The royalty check reached a trickle, and has held there so far. It seems we are not going to be rich after all. But thank the dear lord our investment money is safe. It could have been a whole lot worse.

     Ky is still busy turning out new inventions regularly. But Barbara and I quietly bowed out of the futures portion of the company. We've had all of that form of drama we want, for a lifetime. And, I still remember the last time a Gillum signed someone else's note, in 1930. It extended The Great Depression for my family in the mountains of Wing, Arkansas, sixteen years.

     But wait. This story is not over yet. Do you remember me speaking of Teresa, Ky's wife?