Shimano 100 Works Anniversary book

My CV should have gone in the bin. I had 3 years sales support experience at IBM and a degree in English. All the directors were away except the one who interviewed me. At that time IBM was revered in the corporate world. She assumed I was a marketing expert, because my card said IBM Marketing Representative on it. I don't know why, my job title was Systems Engineer, although I had no technical qualifications. (IBM was going through a we-can-do-no-wrong phase. Hiring arts graduates to be fake engineers was an experiment. I was one of the first batch. They liked the idea of having a clean slate, instead of people with relevant degrees who wouldn't do things the IBM way.) Anway, I assumed Madison would give me marketing training. A third of my time at IBM had been residential training courses. I thought that was typical business practice.

I'd just become one of the few amateurs to buy the new 7400. Monty at Condor had given me the brochures and I mugged up on the Campag-Shimano battle. I blabbed some fake it till you make it bollocks about brand positioning and was hired. When I started the MD returned from his holiday and was puzzled. Openly scornful, actually. It dawned on me that not one penny would be invested in training me. I sat through a couple of meetings and realised that the main part of the job was to anticipate the quantity of Shimano products which could be flogged to dealers so that Madison's cashflow wouldn't be harmed by holding more than a tiny bit of stock. Shimano would send us a telex saying we should order ten times more and I would have to write diplomatic replies. Madison had only just won the Shimano concession, so there was no sales history to analyse. I was completely clueless. And horrified. I quit by mutual agreement. I learned a lot though, and got a lifelong friendship out of it. It was six weeks well spent.