Consuming Interest
The Light Brigade
By LESLIE ADRIAN
The news that two of the big five lamp manu- facturers were to amalgamate (Thorn Electrical Industries lighting division with AEI's two), bringing into one camp at least three well-known brands (Atlas, Mazda and Ediswan), and a num- ber not so well known, reminded me that there is a remarkable coincidence of prices between price ranges. Of the brands carried by most hardware shops and department store basements (and how odd, too, that most of these stock only one make) all 25, 40, 60 and 100 watt bulbs seem to cost Is. 10d. (even 'double-life' Ascot has joined this club), with the 75-watters priced at
2s. 3d. And all the mushroom-shaped types (AEI's Netabulb, Osram's Filta-lite, Ascot's Diplomat, etc.) cost 2s. 6d.
Unbranded bulbs (what the champagne trade calls Buyer's Own Brand) cost quite a few pennies less. In Gamages, for instance, along- side the Osram display rack I found Gamages `Guaranteed' bulbs at Is. 5d. for 75 and 100 watts, and Is. 3d. for 25, 40 and 60—an inter- esting departure from the branded price range where the 75 watt bulb is priced a predictable 5d. higher because, I am told, the makers want to discourage their use so that they can eventu- ally stop making them. The unanimity of action and intention in this trade is fascinating, and existed before the present merger, probably because these keenly competitive chaps keep such a sharp eye on each other, no doubt at the social goings-on before and after the meetings that they all attend at the Electric Lamp Industry Council's secluded offices in Bedford Square. At least that's what the ELIC told me. One of the less welcome side-effects of last winter's power cuts and voltage reductions was that electric light bulbs lasted longer, which had a depressing effect on sates. I asked one of the big five why, if this was so, they couldn't make a lamp that lasted longer at 240 volts. To para- phrase his answer, you can't win. You can either have more light for a shorter time, or less light for longer. When the filament glows very brightly it burns itself out that much more quickly. Another enlightening comment from this source was that coiled-coil or double-coil lamps (the spirally wound filament is twisted into a second spiral) give better illumination (the man said 'more lumen hours') but are more likely to break than the tougher single coil. This prob- ably wouldn't matter in a fixed fitting, but such bulbs, burnt cap down (lamps are still made to hang, not to stand) in a movable socket such as that in a desk or standard lamp, will probablY have a shorter life than a single coil (they an cost the same, no matter what the filament). Another point to watch in the bulb business is the effect on prices of the abolition of indi- vidual resale price maintenance. Although the industry naturally repudiates any idea that price coincidence is any more than an effect of corn- petition, the big boys admit that they try to maintain their own prices. They do not, how- ever, answer questions about who makes the lamps for Woolworths and other stores who sell them well below branded levels. I get the ill: pression that lamps could be a great deal cheaper, but what the heck, it's only money.
If any business should have a grapevine, it is the wine trade. Over this viticultural cony munications network I picked up a signal recently , about Macedonian wines. Having imbibed Turkish in situ, Bulgarian at random and Greek occasionally, I tuned in, and uncovered an iin" pecunious wine-drinker's supplement to the not to be despised Spanish and Moroccan canto' butions to his cellar. Under the modern-minded Titoist regime the Yugoslays have begun to develop their impover- ished south, on the lines of the Italian er)" couragement of their mezzogiorno. Part of this development has been the cultivation of nevi. vineyards and the building of new cellars !) Macedonia. In addition to the already familiar Lutomer wines from the north, the Yugoslavvs have begun the production of a beautiful, NI' bodied white wine, Zilavka, from an indigenous grape. Shipped into London and bottled b Richard and William Teltscher Ltd. (Town H Chambers, 374 Old Street, ECI, BIShopsg3te 6867), this unusual and most attractive wine costs only 8s. a bottle. Another white at the salve price is Smederevka, and there are two reds' Kavadarka, bright, clean and claret-like (7s. 91:) and Prokupac, smooth and Burgundy-h° (8s. 3d.), the last from Serbia.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, as the imitators always say. But there are other motive' like money. Pye Records is currently doing nicely with its new range of Top Six records, tni, ashamedly close copies by minor artists of `110„9 hits made by the aristocrats—Beatles, Dave Clari"5 etc. In the weeks since the first of the series o'hae issued it has sold 110,000 copies and is said 1° e still selling well. The target reported when t`'hud series was launched was 100,000. Now the secolis Top Six is out and is also setting the cash register tinkling. The series shows that the price mechanisfri, works after all. The records which have thro full-length numbers crowded on each side. a,tilr sold for 6s. 8d. compared with around 10s. L°0 the usual two-numbers-a-side disc. The artists 31.0 so minor that none of them has been named ° the labels so far.
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