There comes a time in every childs early life when they will need to be moved out of their cot into a bigger bed. at this time it is advisable to fit a bed guard to their bed to keep them safe at night. Some parents do not like to feel they are putting a barrier up to the kids but really it doesnt have to feel like a prison.
Traditional bed guards are quite cumbersome things and these are the ones that parents have in mind when they think they do not want one. They are often large, heavy wooden slatted guards that have to be bolted on to the bed. They are a pain when you are wanting to take the guard off and then put it back on again which is actually more often than you think.
When you want to read your child a bed time story you will want to take the guard off so you can sit on the edge of the bed and not have to talk through the rails. Also if your child wants to play games on their bed during the day then you wouldnt really want the guard up.
Rather than have to deal with the difficulties of fitting and unfitting a large wooden bed guard in the traditional way there are modern alternatives available. Firstly you may be able to find inflatable bed guard rails which can be used as an easier to fit alternative.
Secondly there are foam bed guards which can be fitted beneath the sheets in order to form a wedge shaped barrier to the child. This is much less restrictive on the child and is actually much more comfortable. They can roll up against it as they fidget in their sleep without banging themselves and waking themselves up.
When it comes to story time or play time the bed guard can remain in place as it can just be sat on without damaging it. it is hard wearing foam which springs back into shape once you have sat on it.
The other great thing about it being made from foam is that it is extremely lightweight and therefore is portable. it can be taken for sleep overs at friend or family and it is also great for taking away on holiday.
This is a showcase of the Modern Kids & Children’s Bedroom ideas 2012 images that can also be found on weplan.com.au. This slideshow is designed to assist you with ideas with your next interior design project.
Since I have conducted a number of presentations with audiences ranging from a group of 6th graders to 75 networking professionals, I wanted to offer some advice on how to create an effective presentation. Good presentations and public speaking skills can help you to overcome other weaknesses you may have. ever notice that the best speakers sell more, get promoted more and are good at impromptu discussions? Here are a few tips:
1-Know your audience. Don’t use industry jargon in front of people who will not be familiar with the terminology. 2-Practice in front of a mirror. You may be making strange facial expressions, wringing your hands, or pacing. these bad habits can distract you audience. 3-Watch the ‘umms’ and ‘you knows’. take a Toastmasters class and the group will track your ‘umms’ using a clicker. You will be amazed at the number you rack up this is a great place to practice speaking in a nurturing environment. 4-Vary your speaking tone. M-o-n-o-t-o-n-e is boring. 5-Pause during your speech and ask if people understand your points. allow time to backtrack and provide alternative explanations to get your point across. 6-Beware of the use PowerPoint. 50% of the time it crashes and disrupts the momentum of your presentation. Dimming the light for more than 5 minutes puts people to sleep. the average human being has a 20-minute attention span. Looking at graphs in the dark is a great way to get people to use their cell phones to send emails. 7-Be careful with jokes. You do not want to accidentally offend your audience. A better idea is to use a humorous personal or made up story about you. Laughing helps people pay attention and relax. 8-Throw in a couple moves during the speech. Switch sides of the podium, walk in front of the audience. this forces people to follow you and not go comatose staring a fixed object. 9-Don’t read your presentation. this is a big no-no and the number 1 cause of audience boredom. If you have back up reading material, hand it our after you are done or email it later. 10-Limit your number of handouts. People will skip ahead and not pay attention to what you are saying. 11-If someone’s cell phone rings.STOP speaking until the offending individual mutes the phone. everyone will stare at them, and feel bad for you. Sympathetic listeners are more prone to hear your message.
Have a big presentation coming up at your company? Beware of these 3 people.
The Casual Listener. this is the person who was made to go by his boss. He would rather be texting his buddies than hearing you.
The Numbers guy. He/she likes to look over your financial data and check you math for accuracy while you are presenting. this person can make you look like an ass when the questions come up at the end so make sure to double check your material for accuracy.
The Decision Maker. this is the most important person in the audience. If you know what he/she likes, you can make sure to hit those topics hard during your presentation.
Finally, be sure to make time for questions at the end of the presentation. If there are no questions, then you probably were unsuccessful at capturing the audiences’ attention. Make sure your presentation will cause people to ask questions by doing a dry run for a trusted colleague. have them make suggestions on how to stimulate the crowd. Give some of these tips a try and see if they help your career down the road.
The Casio SA-76 Mini Keyboard is an orange and black 44 key electronic keyboard that has an LDC display which helps beginners play the piano or organ. It has 50 rhythms, 100 tones, and 10 integrated songs.
It has an LSI sound source and eight-note polyphony for better sound. The LCD display also helps you select music and options aside from aiding you to play music even if you are not an expert keyboard player.
You can easily switch from piano to organ mode with a flick of a switch. It measures 9.6 x 8.8 x 25.2 inches and weighs about 3.7 pounds. It’s a great small keyboard for beginners and kids. Kids can play comfortably with 44 tiny keys and 5 percussion pads. It also has a lighting system and LCD display that guide you to play songs.
The Casio SA-76 Mini Keyboard has a built-in grip to enable you to carry the instrument easily. It is powered by 6 AA batteries and can also be used with a power adapter. The unit comes with a lesson book and score book. Mute functions can also make this keyboard useful for accompaniment purposes. There is a phrase repeat function and a 3-step lesson guide.
Pros
According to some reviews, this keyboard can help you play the piano or organ even if you never had formal keyboard lessons in your life. It is also so light and compact, it can fit in a large backpack. Another user said that the 8 note polyphony feature is helpful with chording. many parents who bought this keyboard for their kids say that it is perfect for tiny hands and carrying around. Actually some adults admitted to liking it to.
Many people like the earphone function because it won’t disturb other people in the house. Kids can play with it all day and nobody would mind or hear it. Another feature people and kids like about it is its portability which is made easier by battery power. Power cords won’t keep you confined to one place. you don’t need an electrical outlet to get this tiny keyboard working. It can be used practically anywhere, said some buyers.
People who have always wanted to play the keyboard said that this instrument makes it possible for them to learn how to play the piano, even if they don’t enrol in piano lessons.
Cons
A few users said that the Casio SA-76 Mini Keyboard uses up a lot of batteries, and if you want to get an electrical cord or adapter, it may be next to impossible to find the right one for it. Some people also say that the light guide feature isn’t really functioning or does not exist.
Although this keyboard has some problems with electrical cords, it is an ideal gift for your child or anyone who wants to learn how to play the piano or organ. you can even use it in the car and no one will even hear it playing except for the user. you can bring this keyboard anywhere. The size of the keys are also perfect for tiny fingers and kids won’t have a problem reaching for keys on this compact keyboard.
New York City-based menswear designer Todd Snyder is having a banner year. with barely three seasons of his namesake label presented to buyers and the press, the Ames, Iowa, native started off 2012 with a February nod from GQ magazine, which chose him as one of the best new menswear designers in America.
That was followed, in March, by a Council of Fashion Designers of America nomination for the Swarovski Award for Menswear (given to new, emerging and up-and-coming brands) along with Phillip Lim and Antonio Azzuolo, an honor Snyder calls "a complete surprise."
We first crossed paths with Snyder back when he was senior vice president of menswear at J. Crew, and his stint there (he left there in 2008 to launch his own label) coincided with the company's push into heritage brand collaborations with the likes of Timex and Red Wing, and the opening of the men's-only Liquor Store boutique in New York City. back then he spoke about how his Iowa background was an asset in the quest to tap into the power of America's authentic legacy brands.
Snyder's emphasis on heritage was still very much in evidence when we caught up with him on a recent Thursday after a trunk show at the Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills.
"My father always said if you want to be the best, you need to work for the best," he said, by way of explaining a career arc that included working for the Gap and Ralph Lauren before landing at J. Crew. "And [J.Crew chief executive officer] Mickey [Drexler] was my finishing school."
A few minutes later, Snyder opened his sport coat and pointed to a label inside. "I did a collaboration with Southwick," he said, referring to the Lawrence, Mass.-based men's clothier that dates to the 1920s. "It’s a way of paying homage to my grandfather — he wore Southwick, and my dad wore Southwick”
The rest of the collection (the Southwick partnership includes just suits, sport coats and a tuxedo) has a similar familiar-but-different vibe, the kind of luxe take on standard-issue garments that Billy Reid is a master of — though filtered through Snyder's Midwestern-meets-military mind set instead of Reid's Southern sensibilities. Key pieces from the spring and summer 2012 collection — which takes inspiration from the 1975 Jack Nicholson movie "the Passenger," includes selvedge chinos (in khaki and white, $325), Bedford cord trousers, dark, raw denim jeans ($275), cargo shorts ($225), bold check button-down shirts ($185), and outerwear pieces like a zip-front nubuck leather jacket ($1,500) and a poly-coated Italian wool peacoat ($595).
In addition to Neiman Marcus stores (and website), Todd Snyder's collection is available at Ron Herman at the Fred Segal Center on Melrose and Confederacy locally, as well as Odin New York and Bergdorf Goodman (including both retailer's websites) in New York.
The ultimate recipient of the CFDA Swarovski Award for Menswear will be announced at a June 4 event in New York City, and even if his namesake label doesn't take top honors, Todd Snyder's high profile, appreciation of heritage and luxe take on the American classics ensure he's not just a blip on the fashion industry radar.
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Photos, from top: looks from Todd Snyder's spring and summer 2012 menswear collection. Credit: Kenny Thomas.
Fashion designer Todd Snyder, one of three nominees for the CFDA's Swarovski Award for Menswear. Credit: Kevin Tachman.
FORTUNE — it may not have the ubiquity of Facebook or the scale of Wal-Mart, but NuMat Technologies someday could change the world just a little bit. At least that’s what the audacious student entrepreneurs behind it believe. NuMat is a university spinout that aims to revolutionize clean tech by making natural-gas vehicles more practical. The Northwestern students behind the startup have come up with algorithms that design nanomaterials that could disrupt the gas-storage industry. Liquid gasoline is expensive. Natural gas is cleaner and cheaper, but it’s hard to squeeze much of it into a tank in a car. NuMat says it can do that at low pressures, increasing capacity by a factor of five. The secret: a proprietary kind of metal-organic framework (MOF), which is a type of remarkable crystalline material with a vast internal surface area; if all of the tiny walls on the inside of a single gram were unfolded, the structures would cover a football field. NuMat’s nanomaterial is ultraporous and, as the plan goes, will hold natural gas the way a bath sponge contains water. The vision is ambitious. says chief technology officer Christopher Wilmer, a 29-year-old Ph.D. candidate in chemical engineering: It’s “the majesty of self-assembly on the molecular scale.”
Sounds cool — and really complicated to some of us in Houston listening to NuMat’s presentation at the recent 2012 Rice University Business Plan Competition. But for investors there, it was entrepreneurial gold. NuMat’s four founders won the grand prize — a record total of $874,000 in investments and cash grants, including $100,000 from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the celebrated Silicon Valley venture capital firm. (Bonus honor: NuMat will get to ring the closing bell at Nasdaq in August.) NuMat says it will use its haul to build infrastructure, as well as to hire more engineers, chemists, and programmers on the way to producing a prototype.
Were it not for the Rice competition, which bills itself as the “world’s richest and largest,” NuMat might never have gotten the opportunity. Forty-two teams, culled from 1,600 entries, made it to the finals in Rice’s brick-bedecked McNair Hall this year. there may be lots and lots of money available to startups these days — from established VCs and angel investors in such places as Northern California, Manhattan, and Texas. yet unless you’re a star graduate student at Stanford or MIT — or, say, a particularly precocious and well-connected curly-haired dropout from Harvard — you probably don’t have easy access to the investors. Similarly, while business incubators and accelerators can provide useful coaching and backup services, those programs are difficult to get into and sometimes demand too much equity.
That’s where business plan competitions like the 12-year-old Rice event come in. “We’ve created an ecosystem of investors, mentors, and other suppliers that allows entrepreneurs to be more successful faster than they would otherwise be,” says Brad Burke, the managing director of the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, which sponsors the competition. The Alliance combines the talents of Rice’s schools of business, engineering, and natural sciences. At the three-day marathon of 15-minute presentations, 60-second elevator pitches, shark-tank grillings, barbecues, and an awards banquet, Burke is the barker.
Some of the $1.5 million awarded this year comes with no strings attached — like $45,000 from NASA and $100,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy. Most of the money comes from organizations like the GOOSE Society of Texas (Grand Order of Successful Entrepreneurs), which in return get a percentage of companies that’s determined by later financing rounds. (Fortune is the media sponsor of the competition and writes about it each year but gives no prizes.) because teams are university-based, they often unite cross-disciplinary skills — engineers and Ph.D.s with imaginations, MBAs with balance sheets. in the history of the Rice competition, 354 teams have raised nearly a half-billion dollars, and 128 of the startups are still in business, employing more than 1,000. The most dramatic success has been Auditude, a video advertising platform that won the grand prize in 2005 and was sold to Adobe (ADBE) in November for $120 million.
Inter-university business plan competitions go back to the early 1980s. The first — Moot Corp, at the University of Texas at Austin’s business school — was intended to mimic the venerable moot court competitions at law schools. But Moot Corp did more than a moot court and more than the traditional case studies in MBA education: The competition was among actual, rather than hypothetical, ventures, and the judges were VCs with real cash. Over the course of the past decade, the number of competitions has proliferated — from about 350 in 2006 to triple that today. At Wake Forest University, competitors get two minutes and 28 floors in a moving elevator to pitch their ideas. Columbia University hosts the Outrageous Business Competition to showcase, well, schemes like Turn Off, a drug that blocks sexual arousal by stopping the production of pheromones.
Rice Business Plan Competition: The winners
The closest that teams got to whimsy at Rice might have been Action Figure Laboratories, a retail-store notion from Rice students that gives boys the chance to customize toys in the way girls do at Build-a-Bear. The twist: a 3-D scanned miniature version of your face on your action figure. (Voodoo note to editor: We now have your mug on a doll!) Then there’s PhoneSoap, from students at Brigham Young, which won top honors for marketing. Targeting “the germ-conscious public,” PhoneSoap says it has the “world’s first UV-sanitizing cellphone charger.” Wide-eyed investors (all with cellphones) learned that mobile phones carry 18 times more bacteria than the flush handle in a public restroom. “Gross!” proclaim PhoneSoap’s co-founders during their presentation. Maybe they’re talking profits. so, if $39 PhoneSoap makes it to market, when you wake up every morning to the tune of, say, “Hells Bells” on your iPhone, it will be not only charged but clean. (Never mind that you then immediately put your bug-infested fingers on it.)
Several Rice contestants had purely online plays. SasaAfrica, from MIT, didn’t receive a boatload of money but was the darling of many judges. The for-profit social enterprise is an e-commerce site, connecting craftswomen from the developing world directly to consumers worldwide, via a mobile phone. SasaAfrica won $26,250, including $10,000 for social impact. still, the typical startup focused on a new medical device or industrial process — the kind of idea that costs more to develop. Lemm Technologies, from Purdue, won $111,500 to help develop a non-invasive way to monitor glucose levels in diabetes patients — a $7 billion industry in the U.S. in the way a finger-mounted pulse oximeter measures a patient’s oxygen level, Lemm says it will be able to measure blood glucose by shining a laser horizontally through the curvature of a nail; because nails are translucent, the system theoretically allows for a more accurate reading than going through skin. if it works, Lemm will have a diabetes test that doesn’t involve drawing blood. But the company needs to build a prototype and show that it can work on a real finger rather than nail clippings of the wife of COO Marcus Kramer, 26, who recently got his doctorate in biomedical engineering.
Another Purdue startup, Medtric Biotech, is trying to bring to market Osmotec, “an entirely new concept for bactericidal action” that the startup claims also facilitates wound healing. The company says there are no newfangled ingredients in the gel that would worry the FDA — only “nanobubbles” that are able to pierce and dehydrate bacteria, even superbugs. Rice investors and judges were impressed: Medtric was the runner-up to NuMat Technologies, winning $146,000 in investments and grants, including the $25,000 NASA Game Changer Award. more important, says Sean Connell, Medtric’s 27-year-old president and a biomedical engineering Ph.D. candidate, the company gained visibility. “I just knocked on the door of 250 investors,” he says. those investors can be pretty good at wooing back. just ask Henrik Skovsgaard of Senseye, a University of Copenhagen software company that markets its product as “eye control for mobile devices.” Skovsgaard, who holds a Ph.D. in “gaze interaction,” hung around the night the competition festivities ended. some of the sponsors, he wrote in an e-mail to Fortune, “introduced us to American whiskey (in large quantities) in the hotel bar.”
Entrée to investors is what attracted Solanux, an entry from the University of Idaho that promises a healthier potato. “Idaho’s not crawling with angels and VCs,” says CEO Gaylene Anderson, 41, who’s an executive MBA student and also works in the university’s Office of Technology Transfer. Her company means to transform potato products from a diabetic nightmare into a fiber-rich resistant starch that produces only a low glycemic response. Anderson has the ebullience of an evangelist who was thrilled to be out of town for a few days, but she nonetheless carried in her handbag a piece of home wherever she went at Rice: a big potato, which she used as a prop. Solanux won $25,000 in the competition.
For their part, the grand-prize winners from NuMat Technologies could not have had a more perfect time. At the closing gala, where NuMat was announced as the victor, the team came to the stage to pick up their grand prize check — in giant form, just like at state lotteries. But with a flourish, the sponsors added another $300,000.
Even with that investment windfall, it was still neckties rather than nanotechnology that people wanted to ask the NuMat team about. everybody at a business plan competition seems to be in a dress shirt and a somber suit. But the four NuMat guys sported matching ties that shouted “geek”: illustrations of the MOF structure that the team aims to get rich on. Designed by Wilmer’s wife, Emily Winerock — a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Toronto — the ties were printed by the do-it-yourself retailer Zazzle. just two days after the competition, the “silky, 100% polyester” ties were up for sale at numat-tech.com for $32 apiece — along with NuMat-branded coffee mugs. It’s “our backup business,” says COO Tabrez Ebrahim, 31. Once an entrepreneur, forever an entrepreneur.
This story is from the may 21, 2012 issue of Fortune.
Although currency prices in the Forex market may be volatile, they generally repeat themselves in cycles, creating trends. the trends can be analyzed by traders using technical tools. Oscillators are considered leading indicators and typically turn before price reversals. they are primarily used in lateral price movement.
Oscillators Oscillators are considered leading indicators and typically turn before price reversals. they are primarily used in lateral price movement. However, if we get into the market situation, where the instrument trends, the oscillator still gives us signals to sell or to buy, but most of them are false. the group of oscillators includes Stochastic, RSI, Momentum, Williams’ Percent Range, Rate of Change, Commodity Channel Index and Bollinger Bands.
Relative Strength Index (RSI) W. Wilder is the author of the popular RSI indicator and he introduced other popular indicators in business practices, such as Directional Movement Concept, True Range or Volatility Index and the Parabolic Stop and Reverse. RSI is included in all software products intended for technical analysis, and everyone, even the simplest charting tool on the Internet can provide it. Oscillators are derived from the underlying currency to provide signals regarding overbought and oversold conditions. since the market fluctuates, prices tend to overshoot or overextend. the most common oscillators are described below.
Calculation of RSI indicator Relative Strength Indicator is used to measure the strength or momentum of a currency pair. This indicator is calculated by comparing a currency pair’s current performance against its past performance. to calculate a single indicator we need only one variable, and that is the period which we will use for the calculation. Period is again meant last lines on the chart. Period 14 will therefore use the 5 minute charts, RSI values will be calculated on the basis of the last 14 five-minute segments, period 14 in the daily chart will the RSI values calculate on the basis of the last two trading days. the formula for calculating the RSI indicator is as follows:
RSI = 100 – 100 / (1 + RS) RS = (average number of lines that conclude higher than the previous segment) / (average number of lines that entered below the last segment)
If we wanted to get the current value of the RSI with a period, say 14, then we would have to proceed as follows:
1. Count how many of the last 14 lines have the close value above the previous close lines. Then we have to divide this number by the number fourteen.
2. Count how many of the last 14 lines have the close value below the previous close lines. Then we have to divide this number by the number fourteen.
3. Divide the value from the bullet no. 1 by the value of value of the bullet no. 2, thus we will obtain the value of RS.
4. Count the current RSI as 100 – 100 / (1 + RS). As a result we obtain a value between 0-100.
How to Trade Forex with the RSI Indicator There are many ways how to use a RSI indicator. the basic way of buying is when the RSI curve exceeds 20 upward or sell when the RSI curve exceeds 80 downwards (some traders use values between 30 and 70).
An RSI above 70 indicates an overbought condition, which in turn indicates a sell signal. An RSI below 30 represents an oversold condition, which implies a buy signal. moreover, a sell signal is indicated when the market price is high and the RSI value begins declining. Conversely, a buy signal is indicated when market price is low and the RSI value begins to rise.
During my youth, Detroit Tigers shortstop Alan Trammell, Red Wings center Steve Yzerman and Pistons guard Joe Dumars were three consummate professionals who epitomized strong leadership.
While each was a star in their own right, Detroiters loved these blue-collar guys for their leadership qualities.
Trammell, Yzerman and Dumars were all quiet, lead-by-example leaders.
They epitomized the hard hat, lunch pail-type work ethic Detroiters related to well.
More importantly, these men were the glue that held their teams together—even during the most trying of times.
Never did you hear any drama in the press from Trammell, Yzerman or Dumars—not like what we see today at least.
Never did you hear these men chastise their teammates for poor performance.
When placed on a pedestal, these men spoke in “we” versus “I” terms with regards to their team’s success.
When the team did not perform well, these men were the first to jump on the sword, even if the defeat was not their fault.
Off the field, Trammell, Yzerman and Dumars lived noble lives and were actively involved in Detroit’s community.
Because of these intangibles, fans of all ages loved these athletes. Safe to say, these men were truly missed both on and off the field of battle when they retired from their respective sports.
Now an adult, I still seek out leaders with similar traits to these men. along the way, I have discovered four of my favorites, which are revealed in this slideshow.
A Healdton resident was seriously injured Wednesday night when she was thrown from the inner tube she was riding behind a boat on Lake Murray.
The Oklahoma Highway Patrol said Brittney Hager was air lifted from the scene of the accident near Martins Landing. She was admitted to Baptist Hospital in Oklahoma City in serious condition with multiple injuries.
Lake Patrol reports indicate Hager was being towed by a 1997 Caravell boat, driven by 36 -year-old Sara Hall, Lone Grove. Hall made a sharp turn causing Hager to be ejected.
Neither Hall nor Steven Hager, Healdton, and Tim Hager, Ardmore, identified as passengers in the boat were injured as a result of the accident.
A Healdton resident was seriously injured Wednesday night when she was thrown from the inner tube she was riding behind a boat on Lake Murray.
the Oklahoma Highway Patrol said Brittney Hager was air lifted from the scene of the accident near Martins Landing. She was admitted to Baptist Hospital in Oklahoma City in serious condition with multiple injuries.
Lake Patrol reports indicate Hager was being towed by a 1997 Caravell boat, driven by 36 -year-old Sara Hall, Lone Grove. Hall made a sharp turn causing Hager to be ejected.
neither Hall nor Steven Hager, Healdton, and Tim Hager, Ardmore, identified as passengers in the boat were injured as a result of the accident.
12-lead EKG is a basic cardiac test which is an integral part of most cardiac consultations.
Electrodes are attached to chest and left on for 24 hours while continuous rhythm recording is made on a digital recorder. Patients continue their usual daily activities while the Holter monitor is on. the recording helps physicians understand a patient’s 24-hr pattern of heart rhythm.
This is another device for recording heart rhythm but it works differently. whereas a Holter records continuously for 24 hours, an Event Recorder only records events. it is smaller than a Holter monitor and is easier to wear and can be worn for several weeks. it is used to record rhythm disturbances that are infrequent and therefore may not be seen by a 24-hour Holter monitor. the Event Recorder is always recording but discards the data that is more than about five minutes old. Therefore a large memory is not required allowing the device to be smaller and more comfortable to wear.
When a patient wearing an event recorder experiences any symptoms, they are supposed to press a button on the monitor that makes the existing recording permanent. Because the last five minutes are always in the monitor a palpitation of fainting spell that just passed can still be recorded.
To mark Record Store Day as a gateway to the music world this independent record shop is hard to beat. our man names it his favourite record shop of all time.
When I left school in the early 80s I didn’t go to university I went to Jumbo Records in the (Avid) Merrion Centre in Leeds. Not to work, no matter how many times I asked, just to hang out. I’d go listen to what they were playing, to read the handwritten lists of import singles, to flick through the album and twelve inch sleeves in their clear plastic covers, to read the small musicians wanted notice board and look at the fanzines. It was a world of weird names, great sleeves and amazing sounds. King Tubby, Dead Kennedys and Joy Division were everywhere. Jumbo had a sense of style. It was a small but clean, brightly lit unit with a counter and one central island full of sounds, and their singles bags had an elephant logo on them. with the exception of the floor and the ceiling everywhere was covered in records, the place was a bolthole for people who were passionate about new and rare music and collectors of coloured vinyl. there was fuck all to do on the dole in Leeds in the early 80s and walking skint to Jumbo was the highlight of the day. for such a small place they had a lot of staff: Hunter and Lornette who owned it, Mike with the long goth hair, Choque from Salvation and later Black Star Liner with the terrible shirts, Trevor with the soul moustache. I loved it in there, it was the best thing about Leeds. a trap door to the life I wanted and not the one that was on offer.
Here’s how Hunter got into music retail:
“The starting point might be back in the early 60’s when I became involved in music when my brother joined a group/band and they needed some transport. I can’t play an instrument or sing (believe me I’ve tried but it can be very painful for the listener), so I bought a van and soon got known by other local bands as a decent bloke to contact to get them from a to B. Bands came and went and the last one I was running around and managing split up suddenly leaving me with lots of equipment stuck in the van. a couple of DJs got in touch and we purchased the PA equipment, bought some decks and they started a mobile disco with me running them about. within about three weeks we got so busy that I had to be shown how to spin the decks so that we could honour all our bookings. From this start I ended up working for the Mecca Group and playing in night clubs etc. The shop just came along by accident with no master plan, seemed like a good idea at the time, and I certainly had no idea I’d still be doing it nearly 40 years later…”
And we borrowed this from their website:
“Hunter Smith established Jumbo Records in September 1971, the name and logo coming from the successful disco and DJ business he was involved with called Jumbo Mobile Discotheque. The shop was started on the suggestion of an acquaintance who wanted someone to sell records at the back of his cassette and tape equipment store to encourage customers to come in. Hunter, still DJ-ing in the evenings around the clubs and dance halls of the area, and not being one of the most early of risers, decided, after a lot of deliberation, to take up the offer. some loans, shop fittings and stock were organized, and he set off trying to learn as much as possible about the business and keep abreast of all the new releases each week (the Tams – “Hey Girl Don’t Bother Me” was at number 1 in the charts followed by Rod Stewart – “Maggie May”, plus Isaac Hayes – “Black Moses” was our first good selling album). within two months the ‘acquaintance’ got greedy; he wanted Hunter and his kit out so that he could use the space for himself. Needless to say Christmas and New Year 1971 was a worrying time. Deep in dept and with all stock in a lock up garage, Hunter trudged off around Leeds to find somewhere to trade from to try and pay the bills. Eventually a small room was rented for £5 per week, on the balcony of the Queens Arcade. The fixtures and fittings were squeezed in, some having to be left in the lock-up garage due to lack of space. a large part of the existing stock was sold to ‘a man in the trade’ for less than cost, in order to release some cash to help reduce the ever-increasing pile of bills.
Hunter then stuck to selling mainly singles (hits of the day plus imports and all the latest soul and reggae releases). People would call by to ask for the ‘tunes’ they had heard on an evening, and DJs were encouraged to purchase their records in the store. by late 1973 a full time member of staff was required to help serve the ever-increasing flow of customers coming through the door. Enter Trevor Senior – yes, that’s the Trev who’s still with us – he came to help over Christmas, but we didn’t sort out which Christmas!
Then in 1977 – BANG! – along came punk rock. We seemed to be in the right place at the right time. We broadened the range of music we stocked and this period gave the framework to what we are today. Finally, in 1988 we needed more space and a modern shop unit to sell and display the wide choice of music we now stock – so here we are, at 5/6 St. Johns Centre, Leeds: over 30 years and still trading.”
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“there was fuck all to do on the dole in Leeds in the early 80s, walking skint to Jumbo was the highlight of the day.”
