The owner manager: some training perspectives Available to Purchase

The firm which forms the subject of the first study makes bedding background and development The managing director of the company came to Britain in 1939 as a seventeen‐year‐old refugee from Austria. He joined a bedding firm and worked his way up, gaining experience of all aspects of the business: machining, frame‐making, cutting, assembly and covering, and eventually sales and purchasing. As a result of this experience he acquired a good technical and practical knowledge of the manufacturing and selling process, and so, in 1956, he set up in business on his own. This was done by taking over a small bedding firm which had gone bankrupt. Little capital was involved in the initial founding since the firm being taken over operated in rented buildings. In 1959 the firm moved to its present site and in 1963 was renamed ‘DEEL BEDDING COMPANY’. All the shares are owned by the managing director, his wife and their three daughters. The managing director works full‐time in the company and his wife part‐time.