Not many people came out on the right side of a spat with Lord Arnold Weinstock, the long-time boss of GEC, but Memec, which became the world’s third largest distributor before it was sold to Avnet, recorded an honourable draw as Memec’s founding CEO, Dick Skipworth recalls.
“The head of procurement at GEC's Avionics division at Rochester rang me one day to say that Weinstock had had a letter from a Memec employee telling him that if his avionics division did not move with the times, its results would suffer in the future. It was addressed to Weinstock and signed by Ron Davies of Memec Systems”, recalls Skipworth.
“It turned out that Ron had been trying to sell an Ethernet networking system to the avionics division, but no one there could make a decision about it. So he'd written to Weinstock after a Memec sales course had taught always to go to the top if you don't succeed lower down”, remembers Skipworth.
“Fearing the loss of a major chunk of business, I went to Rochester to eat humble pie to be met, not by the head of procurement, but by Jack Pateman, managing director of the avionics division.”
Fortunately, though not known to Skipworth at that time, Pateman was one of the few GEC people with a reputation for standing up to Weinstock.
“’Are you the boss of the man who wrote that letter?' asked Pateman.”
“’Yes,’ I replied, feeling like a man putting his head on the block.”
“Bloody good letter that - let's have some lunch', said Pateman and, within a month, Ron Davies had got the order for the Ethernet system.”
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