Lifetime Achievement Award
It’s our honour to honour those whose careers have shaped Australia’s hi-fi industry and brought the joys of highquality home entertainment to so many. This year’s Sound+Image Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Paul Clarke, General Manager of Cogworks, although he has seen so many corners of audio during his career that we figured the easiest way to chart his path was to ask Mr Clarke himself.
SOUND+IMAGE: You were born in the UK, but came to Australia quite young?
PAUL CLARKE: I did — born in West Hartlepool in County Durham, and arrived at Essendon Airport, Melbourne, at the age of 10, and I remember it all! We flew on a BOAC Comet 4C, and it took 36 hours, with five stops. On board the plane was Mum, Dad, my sister, Nana and Grandad — all ‘10 pound Poms’. Australia got me as a freebie! Dad got his first job at Massey Ferguson tractors in Sunshine. We moved around a lot and I went to a variety of schools, ending up in my senior years at Taylor’s Business College in the city. I excelled at snooker, making plenty of lunch money at Lindrum’s Billiard Parlour!
S+I: How did you get into hi-fi? Were you always a music fan? PC: Well my sister and
I always loved music, certainly, and saw plenty of bands — including the Beatles. But my first job was at the ANZ bank as a teller and doing ledgers — boring as hell, except when we used to take our Webley 38 down to the King Street shooting range for practice. Yes, tellers had pistols allocated to us back in 1970! I lasted nine months and started selling Britannica Encyclopedias door to door, until my new brother-in-law took me aside for a talk in his great Vermillion Fire Falcon GS Ute and told me to get a real job, even if it was packing parcels! So I did... Haco/Hagemeyer were the distributors of JVC, Maxell tapes, Bryon lighters and National Panasonic back then, and in 1971 my job was to pack the spare parts.
S+I: And from spares to the original items? Did you have a hi-fi ‘epiphany’ moment?
PC: I was spending most lunch-times in the showrooms, to the point where the National Sales Manager asked me to help out at hi-fi shows. This was a bit of a dream for me, as I loved the gear. Then Technics was launched in 1972, and I was invited by Peter Lee to attend the event. I won’t go into it all here but that event changed my life and confidence forever. Then in 1972 I asked Phil Bruce, a rep for JVC, if he could find me a job selling hi-fi part time — Friday nights and Saturday mornings, as we closed at 1pm back then — and he found me a job at E&S Trading in Ashburton, a tiny hi-fi shop, but nice people. I sold a JVC QSL-777E 4-channel console system, and the bloke I sold it to lived miles away in Essendon and couldn’t fit it in his car, so I said I would bring it to him in my new Cortina!
S+I: Going the extra yard with added value there.
PC: Well he greeted me with a bottle of Scotch and a big smile. Turns out he had rung the General Manager of E&S on the Saturday morning after, and I got offered a full-time job, double the pay, free petrol and free lunch every day — what a deal! So I said yes. I was there for two years — great fun. Then in 1975, Geoff Brown from Rank Industries offered me a rep’s job — company car and travel, yes please! And great brands to sell: Thorens, Leak, Sansui, Ortofon, Wharfedale and Tandberg…
Then in 1977, Peter Harding was opening a massive new appliance and hi-fi store in Commercial Road, Prahran, and he asked if I would manage it, along with my mate Peter Davey at E&S Trading. The deal was done, and we had plenty of good brands. We
were the first to create a weekend event — it turned out to be the same weekend as the 1977 Collingwood- North Melbourne replay, but it was still busy. I always remember that the new Sansui rep didn’t turn up to help out — so we disconnected all his gear! He called on Monday to ask how much of his gear we had sold...
The following year Peter and I decided to open our own business, which was Penny Lane Audio in the nice upmarket Toorak Village. The shop was smallish, but had great character, including a ghost left behind by the previous tenant, Philip Adams Galleries, which sold mummies and other old artifacts.
We had a ball back then. We were the first hi-fi shop to hold a two-day event over the weekend, promoting it hard on 3XY and in The Green Guide (left). A council inspector called in at around 3pm and said — ‘Who owns this store? Do you know you shouldn’t be open?’ He said he would have to fine us $100 — I said great, would he like a cheque now? He said no, but perhaps he could pop his coat down here and ask about some headphones please…
S+I: You’ve left the industry a few times, first in the 1980s — what happened?
PC: That was after we joined Sound City, bringing Penny Lane into the group. A promising salary and nice car on offer — I was still only 24 years old… why not! Some of it was good — we invented the Midnight Sale where we opened the stores at 12 midnight and just kept going. An incredible success, and we ran it in Adelaide and Canberra stores equally successfully. But overall it turned out to be a bad decision, and after a bit of a legal battle I chose to leave the industry and pursue other roles. And study for my Marketing Degree.
S+I: What brought you back?
PC: Doug Day of Pioneer Electronics called me in 1987 and suggested I come and chat to then-MD Les Black — who became one of two mentors in my life. He offered me the job of Divisional Manager (and later GM), so I agreed to come back to the industry I always loved. Pioneer was a fabulous place to work — the ‘good old days’ of parties, events, travel and a great team of people.
In 1995 I had a brief stint as Marketing Manager at Black & Decker before embarking on a new career path with Agfa Film in 1996 with the most dynamic team of people — we killed it. New business kept on coming, so much so that in 1998 I thought I’d give my old mates at JB Hi-Fi a call and see if I could flog them film and a processing machine for all their stores! They didn’t go for that, but they offered me a job as General Manager to their then 10 stores. It was nice being back in the retail domain and the guys gave me a lot of autonomy and freedom.
Then I was headhunted by Décor Plastics to be their Sales & Marketing Director, and didn’t rejoin the industry until 2003, as GM of Castel Electronics with the late Michael Kwong.
From Castel I chose to do my own thing as PJC Agencies, selling the then-new Digitalview set-top box, Richter speakers, Epos and Creek, and in certain territories with Phil Sawyer at Synergy. In 2006, Phil kindly offered me a full-time role and I enjoyed a good four years there helping the business grow. I’m pleased Phil continues to stay well and his business strong.
S+I: Many people know you from your time with Audio Active — you were there at the beginning for that?
PC: Yes, that was after I got a call in 2009 from my old JB Hi-fi colleague Richard Bouris, telling me about an opportunity to set up a new business with his son Jeremy — it was too good to ignore. Jeremy and I started in a downstairs room in a beautiful Albert Park house and went to work, with me collecting brands and customers for the brands, and Jeremy doing all the necessary back-up stuff. We were able to grow a solid business with great brands, and thanks to a great team effort we won many awards and made friendships along the way. It’s good to see the company continuing to go from strength to strength.
After a brief stint in 2018-19 with the team at Interdyn, long-time colleague David Moseley called and offered me an opportunity to join Cogworks, to help grow the business and to work with some brilliant existing brands. We have just moved into larger premises with dedicated showrooms, and are now growing our team to support our dealers and brands.
S+I: Best memories, looking back?
PC: I’m fortunate to have been in this industry for 40 years, and to have lived through those ‘good old days’ as us old farts call them — but they were! I wish everyone in the game today could have experienced the genuine fun and camaraderie that was around in those days.
If I was to nominate a few people who influenced my career during my working life, it would be Les Black, the MD at Pioneer — for being such a balanced and supremely intelligent person; Bob Minty, GM at Agfa, for being such a visionary; Richard Bouris at Soundair Hi-Fi and JB Hi-Fi co-founder and of course Audio Active, for believing in me. And just for fun… John Fahey, ex-GM of Yamaha for being such a combatant back in my Pioneer days!