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Odds & Ends
Zip, the Brass Pounder, Part III

By Jim Plunkett

Jim Zellon had been a commercial radio operator ever since he was graduated from Massachusetts Radio & Telegraph School. It was 1935 and guys with his ability were in demand aboard ships, planes, and numerous land facilities. He never lacked work, and his speed on the morse code key earned him the nickname of Zip. He had worked for American, PanAm, TWA, TACA, and a host of shipping companies, and ended up in Lima with Faucett Airlines just before WWII. Finally in the late 60´s, technology got in the way, and radio operators were a thing of the past. Braniff, his last employer, gave him a big farewell and kept him on the payroll for $1.00 a year and free flight passes just out of gratitude. Unfortunately, Braniff went under and he was out on the street.

“With a lot of idle time on my hands, I thought I would head back home to Worcester and see the family and the old neighborhood. On the way, I stopped in the Big Apple. The Taft Hotel had always been a favorite spot of mine, certainly not for luxury, but for convenience. While enjoying a beer at the bar, a guy turned to me and asked where I was from. I told him Peru, and he immediately replied, “Oh, that's cotton country.” I said I wasn't much up to date on Peru's textile business, as I had been a radio operator all my life.

He turned out to be a medium sized textile manufacturer from Canada, specializing in chenille bedspreads. He said he was going to a warehouse that was unloading some used equipment and he invited me to come along. I had absolutely nothing to do at the time and decided to take him up on it. He gave me a 30 minute education in the chenille business, pointing out the different size heads available, number of needles, etc., and I got enthusiastic. It wasn't so much about going into the chenille business as it was a chance to turn over a quick buck in Peru where someone should be interested in bargain machinery.

I ended up buying two machines, a 24 needle head for the principle weave and design, and a single needle head for raised designs to give the product a flare. I spent about $300 dollars for two used machines, without motors and without tables, and they explained that Singer Sewing Machine Co. of Lima could supply those basic items to complement the heads.

My only intention was to ship them home, put an ad in El Comercio, the local gazette, with a phone number where someone would call and run over with the money and take them off my hands for a handsome profit.

What I didn't realize was that they wanted to see what they looked like, and I wasn't about to take them out of the crates. They took up valuable space in my garage, and my wife was anxious to get them out of the house. After a lot of inquiries, and not willing to open the crates, I finally decided to rent some cheap space in nearby Miraflores in a small gallery where I reluctantly uncrated them and put them to work. There were good technicians around, and it didn't cost me much to start production.

By fortune, Sears Roebuck put an ad in the El Comercio announcing they were coming to set up in Peru and wanted suppliers of merchandise. I spoke to their buyer and explained I could make bedspreads, but needed capital to buy material and more machines. They offered to give me raw materials in exchange for the finished product. With my free pass on Braniff, off I went to Miami and then on to Chattanooga, Tennessee, the chenille capital of the U.S., and I bought more machines. I found a factory to give me instruction on how to make bedspreads and in less than a week I was on my way home to Lima with a lot of enthusiasm and a little savvier. This was entirely new for me, and despite the fact it had nothing to do with brass pounding, I was excited.

It wasn't long before I was supplying Sears and several other department stores. I even found a market in Bolivia, and the Indian ladies with their braids and multiple skirts would come all the way to Lima, pay cash, and wrap the bedspreads in large bundles and have them trucked back across the Andes to La Paz.

One day I arrived at the shop and there was a great accumulation of lint. The garbage man refused to take it away. One of the girls working for me asked for some lint to stuff a doll. The idea occurred to me to use our cloth scraps from the bedspreads and the lint to make stuffed toys. I set up another company and called it TV Toys to promote the dolls. I even rented a shop in the upscale Galería Boza downtown Lima where they sold like hotcakes. We were making Disney characters like Donald Duck and Mickey, etc., and it wasn't too long before Disney got wind of it. A representative arrived at Lima and politely warned me that I was infringing on their patents.

We made friends immediately, and after a few pisco sours, a bit of dinner here and there and a few laughs, he suggested I call them Burpy and Wally instead of Donald and Mickey, and he headed home on the first flight available to report to his boss.

Business increased nicely. It tripled. Our shop in Miraflores was bursting at the seams. I decided to look for a larger facility in order to expand. There was a large covered area for rent in the industrial neighborhood of Surquillo south of the city of Lima, and with the favorable and stable climate, it didn't require much in the way of construction. By this time I had about 30 girls working for me, cutting, sewing, and stuffing Burpies and Wallies that looked an awful like Disney toys.

While in our original location, I met a neighbor who had his office on the second floor. Tom Fox, an American originally from Wisconsin, became a friend who needed a phone badly for his business. As it turned out, my wife, a Brazilian, had made close friends with the wife of the president of the local telephone company who was also Brazilian. At a time when you had to wait in line for years to get a line, I had one in a matter of hours.

My friend, Tom, got to love my phone. I didn't really use it that much, so I gave him an extension. He was delighted. Tom had the license for Johnson's Wax and Kiwi shoe polish, and his business was also on the move. He spotted a good piece of land in Surquillo to put a plant, and I went along to see it with him. There was another lot available next to his proposed site, and I got interested, thinking it was time to build my own factory.

As it turned out, Tom was unable to get a license, as the wax production contaminated too much in that particular area, and he let it go. I decided to go ahead, and before long, we were breaking ground and building a brand, new chenille manufacturing plant called Colorama Chenille.

The new plant had dying facilities, a two floor office-showroom where we also displayed TV Toys, and the shop was a hornet's nest with 60 girls, dye plant technician, several mechanics, a delivery truck, and a driver, in addition to a plant manager and a complete accounting facility. We had no salesmen. The demand was so good, it wasn't necessary.

Our working conditions were very satisfactory. The help was happy, and we had a nice family relationship. One day, a new girl showed up looking for an opportunity. We were always very careful hiring new people, since there was a law in effect that stipulated if you had a person for over 90 days, which meant you were satisfied, they were doing their job, and they were yours for life, unless you caught them robbing the safe or blowing up the plant.

I asked my supervisor to give her a test, and she turned out to be good seamstress and up to par. Much to my demise, on the 91st day, our new prima donna called all the girls together for a union meeting. A union was the last thing I wanted in my plant, and I was desperate. She was a real instigator, and despite the excellent relationship I had with my girls, they were always open for suggestions.

I called a pilot buddy in Miami and asked him to go to a trick shop and buy me a few packages of itchy powder that the kids used for a hoax on friends. He asked me what I wanted for, and I told him not to worry. I would explain it later. For an investment of $.30 cents, I was ready to attack the enemy.

Before the girls came in one morning, I sprinkled some of the itchy power around the inner side of Miss Union's smock and waited like a hunter. There was a big windowpane in my office overlooking the plant, and I could see her position clearly. When she started to work, I could see her scratching her neck and squirming in her chair. This went on for a while, but she made it through the day.

The next day I repeated the treatment. Again she scratched and squirmed, and I delighted in seeing my $.30 cent investment working. She asked for permission to go home, since she wasn't feeling well and we granted her leave. Two days later she returned looking normal and I increased the dose and expanded the contact areas to the neck and cuffs of her smock. Again she started her dance, and she proceeded to the personnel office where she said the doctor told her she was suffering from an allergy that was evidently produced by something at her worksite, and she decided to resign. My investment had worked like a charm. We were once again a big, happy family.

Two or three years in our new plant, and with continued success, we ran into a revolution. On October 3rd, 1968, an Army General called Juan Velasco decided things weren't going well for Peru and he decided to hold a coup. Democratically elected President Belaunde was ushered out of the country with his wife and his staff at 4 o´clock in the morning, and that was the end of democracy. The Junta Militar, as they called it, went into a leftist dictatorship for 12 years, and drastic social and economic reforms became the order of the day

Amongst the reforms was included the Industrial Community Law, which stated that all the workers were automatically part of the action, since they were the producers and should share the wealth. This soured most manufacturers and industrial expansion stopped. Representatives from the workers were put on the Board, and it got to a point where there was always one of their representatives to check what you were taking home at night, since they were now “stockholders”, and no one was to have privileges, not even the owners.

One young factory owner who had built up his business based on sweat and tears and borrowed capital, almost had a heart attack when they stopped him at the gate on a Friday afternoon as he headed out with the company pick-up truck, alleging that the truck belonged to the factory, and that he had no right to use it for personal use.

Well, when I saw all of this, I got very discouraged; I had had enough. One evening I was invited to a cocktail party and got into a conversation with a guy who was part of the Romero Group, one of Peru's power conglomerates. The Romero family started back in the 19th century when the great grandfather came over from Spain via Mexico and started selling hand woven straw hats which ended up in Panama. Yes, Panama hats! With his own good luck and fortune, Calixto Romero bought land in Piura, got into the cotton business, and eventually became the leading cotton industrialist in the country.

This representative, trying to console me by telling me that this was just a temporary situation, asked to visit my factory. I invited him to see our operation and he made me a proposal. They weren't so interested in the chenille, but in the plant facility. We came to a very handsome agreement, and I sold out. They even hired me to stay on for a few months to train one of their people who would run it until they decided what they would do with it.

From brass pounder to textile cycoon, but again I found myself out on the street. After a well earned rest and a long trip with the family to Europe, I was ready for a new adventure. But that´s another story...”

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