[ Archive: Newton Commercial ]
92 July 2019 MiniWorld
“We invested in the making of the
materials, the right colour, the right
grain. It’s got to be right.”
red because it looked great,” recalls
Vera. “By 1988 there were 20 of us,” says
Richard, “and by 1989, when we moved
to the new 15,000 square foot factory,
there were 35 of us. It was all a bit rapid.”
The couple acknowledge the
tremendous amount of help that
John White played in their success.
He joined them in 1987, as Richard
explains: “John worked for Dunlopillo
at one point and he also worked for
Jackson’s Components who made all
our hardboard and fi breboard panels.
By then we had a lot of tooling to make
all the hardboard and fi bre board panels
for all the trim kits. John was technical
and, between us, we started developing
the Triumph range and continued
tooling the MGB and Midget range. At
this time Vera was running the factory
totally and I was doing development
and sales with John so, from in 1986
onwards, she had control of the factory
and she did all the buying and fi nance.”
The couple credit their successA Morris Minor specialist gave them
an order for 200 seats. “Jack Gill who, in
the 1960s, worked for ICI and developed
the Morris Minor and Mini trim colours,
helped us make the welding tools for
the Morris Minor and instigated where
we could buy the materials from. We
had to buy three lots of colours which
came to £3,500 for that fi rst batch.”
It was a huge outlay for the fl edgling
company and necessitated a bank loan. A
garage was built so that they could have
room for stock and space for their fi rst
employee to work, as Vera recalls: “So
we employed our fi rst person, a sewing
machinist named Maureen Lee who
worked for us for 25 years. Then we used
the corn store in Friston which didn’t
have running water or a toilet so if you
wanted to go to the loo you had to bike
back to the house.” They went back to the
bank and bought a 3000-square-foot unit
in Leiston, in 1986, which was sta ed
with fi ve employees. “The fi rst thing we
did was paint the fl oor and all the rackingbed and get the kitchen table out again
and repair these things. Suddenly we
realised that I was earning more money
doing this than I was as a manager.”
“I left Serck in late ’78,” says Richard,
“and we started Newton Commercial
o cially in very early ’79. We were in
this three-bedroom house in a cul-de-
sac in O ton. At that time the seats in
vehicles had to be in good condition
to pass an MOT. We had this cement
mixer come one morning. We took
the seat out and repaired it but, by
the time we got it going, it was about
8.45am so the mothers couldn’t get
their children out of the drive to go to
school! So we had to sell up. We ended
up in Friston. It was a derelict house
which hadn’t been lived in for 15 years.”
They rented a caravan to live in
while they did up the house, as Vera
recalls. “We were in there for a year
and it was a bit of a nightmare really.
We put a tarpaulin over one ceiling
so it was dry and we carried on doing
these seats and all the time we were
doing this renovation work.”
They started to work on car trim for a
local Morris Minor restorer and then an
MG restorer which gave them experience
of working with leather as, up to this
point, they had just worked with vinyl.
Vera painting the floor of
their first factory in 1986.The caravan they
lived in while they
renovated their house.Their first sewing machine.