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07 31st, 2009| 
BEDROOM CHINA
There is still quite a lot of this about and it’s quite pretty. The most obvious use for old chamber pots, slop pails, washbasins, foot baths, ewers, etc. is for flowers, or to hold flower pots. This china has been used for soup tureens, punch bowls etc. mid provided there are no cracks or chips in the china, I suppose there is no reason why not, but personally the idea does not appeal. Like other pottery it can be mended (see China Mending), and a bit of careful re-touching with a paint brush and enamel can brighten things up a bit.
BEESWAX
Beeswax is the natural wax made by the bees when building honeycombs, mid it can be bought at chemists and sonic hardware stores. It is sold as fine grade, white beeswax, or as natural wax which has an orange brown colour. Ofcourse if you keep bees you will have your own. I once left a bowl of natural beeswax from my own bees on a larder shelf. In due course, at a moment of family crisis, a visitor tried to fry some bacon and eggs in it, mistaking it for dripping. The kitchen smelt wonderful for days, but otherwise it was a waste not only of the beeswax, but of the bacon and eggs!
Beeswax by itself is too hard to use as a polish, and various blends can be made. Beeswax melts at about 65 deg. C. and do take care when making polish as the ingredients arc inflammable. Keep an oldsaucepan for the job and have suitable containers with good lids ready for the polish. I keep my old furniture polish tins and re-use them again and again. Use real turpentine, not turpentine substitute.
3 parts white beeswax 8 parts real turpentine
Melt the wax slowly over a low flame, together with the turpentine. Use a double saucepan if possible, or suspend the container in another saucepan with water in it. Colour the polish with stain if you wish. The stain should be added immediately the concoction is removed from the heat, and mixed in well. Put the polish into a tin and close it tightly. Use it just like any other polish when cold; apply with a soft rag and rub hard.
Recipe z. J lb. beeswax real turpentine
Melt the wax in a saucepan over a low flame, adding well
turpentine and mixing until the whole is the consistency of thick custard. Paint the mixture on to the wood with a rag while it is still warm and leave it to dry. Then polish as hard and as long as youlike. This method is best for natural wood surfaces which will absorb a lot of the polish, but not for surfaces which already have a polish on them.
Recipe 3. 8 ozs. beeswax 2 ozs. resin
real turpentine
Melt the resin, beeswax and a little turpentine in a double saucepan over a low flame. When it is all blended together remove it from the meat and allow it to cool, but before it has set stir in enough turpentine to make a soft polish, about I pt. Acid colouring if required.
This is a leather dressing similar to that used by the British MUSCU111.
7 ozs. anhydrous lanolin
I fluid oz. cedarwood oil
I oz. white beeswax
ti fluid ozs. hexane
Hexane is highly inflammable so do not make this mixture up near an open flame, or use the dressing near an open flame. Dissolve the beeswax in the hexane (no heat is required), add the lanoline and blend well, and lastly add the cedarwood oil.
Recipe 5. furniture cream
3 ozs. white wax
8 ozs. real turpentine 8 ozs. warm water liquid ammonia
Melt the white wax over a low flame. Remove the saucepan from the flame and add the turpentine and the warm water and blend it all together. Add the ammonia drop by drop stirring all the time until the mixture is a thick cream. This old recipe for polish should be used with care as ammonia is a solvent for some varnishes but is excellent on wood which does not have an artificial surface of varnish or French polish.
Recipe 6.
pt. real turpentine pt. soft water
2 ozs. beeswax (natural) I oz. white wax
2 squares camphor
i oz. Castile soap
i teaspoonful ammonia
Shred the waxes and the camphor into the turpentine. Shred the soap into the water and simmer tuitil the volume is reduced by half. Cool and add the turpentine and wax mixture. Blend well together and add the ammonia and shake thoroughly. This is a good cleansing furniture polish.
Recipe 7. z ozs. white beeswax
benzene
Flake the beeswax and then add the benzene and stir until the wax has dissolved. This is a useful dressing for preserving wickerwork and canc.
Recipe 8. wax adhesive
5 parts beeswax
5 parts resin
i part real turpentine
Heat all together gently in a double saucepan until the ingredients blend.
Simple beeswax polishes as in Recipe r make an excellent protective coating for bronze, alabaster, iron, steel, marble and slate, as well as for all kinds of wooden furniture and objects.
Various other polishes which do not contain wax are described in the section oil Polishes.
BIRD-CAGES
Large Victorian bird-cages still turn tip in junk shops. I owned and used one, but unfortunately my Siamese cat discovered that the metal rods were not particularly strong, and after I came home from the cinema one night to find a pathetic heap of blue feathers on the floor, a smug cat, and a bent cage, I reverted to modem steel cages and kept the old one as a relic. Many old cages are somehow reminiscent of the Crystal Palace, and are made of dozens of metal rods, either rusted or covered in filth and old paint. The only real answer is to clean each rod separately with emery paper, or steel wool dipped in paint stripper. It’s
hard work on the fingers and is a good job for the long winter evenings, as it can be done while watching television. Solder broken rods (see Soldering). Having cleaned the cage repaint it, or lacquer it with clear metal lacquer. The application of paint or lacquer by brushing is a tedious job on such an object; spraying might be easier, but to be sure of covering all sides of the rods; dipping is the best answer. If the cage can be taken into sections each section should be dealt with separately, otherwise you are going to need a huge container and an awful lot of paint or lacquer to dip the object effectively.
BLEACHING
Colour or stains can be removed by bleaching. Sunlight will bleach, but it is chemical bleaching which is described in this section. Because the action of bleach is irrevocable take care. It is all too easy to remove not only the stain and the colour but the underlying material; and it is a cardinal rule to use bleach well diluted and to strengthen it gradually if necessary. Always try out bleach on a part of the material where it can do least damage, before making any general applications.
Hydrogen peroxide, and Milton are good bleaches. To bleach very fragile articles which cannot be rubbed, soak a Plaster of Paris slab with hydrogen peroxide and then place the object to be bleached just above the slab, within a quarter of an inch. Do this in an empty drawer or a small cupboard to confine and concentrate the vapours.
Household bleaches such as Doinestos, Brobat, and Parazone are fine for bleaching certain articles, but are strong and may need dilution and they should not be mixed with any other type of cleaner lest you succeed in making chlorine gas which is highly toxic.
Ch bromine T, which is white powder to mix with distilled water, makes a bleach for prints.
Raw wood is bleached, either after stripping down or to remove stains, by swabbing with ordinary domestic bleach. Adjust the strength of the solution according to the degree of lightness required.
gen in water, freeing the oxygen, and this means that it has strong bleaching properties. It is possible to make an apparatus for bleaching prints etc., but I must point out that chlorine gas is dangerous stuff and the greatest care should be taken when using it as a bleach, and all children and animals should be miles away.
The first necessity is a flat box large enough to take the biggest prints you intend to bleach (see Fig. 5). It must be well made with airtight joints. A sheet of thick glass should be used as a lid, for it enables you to see what is going on, and it must fit tile top of the box snugly. If you are doing a proper job, make a frame top and hinge it for the box to drop in on to a narrow ledge, and putty the glass into the frame. Fix a handle to tile lid so that it can be lifted lip easily. Bore a hole in the side of the box and cement a piece of glass tubing to take the gas pipe. Having made your box, test it with a puff or two of cigarette smoke to make sure it is gas tight.
Get a gallon cider jar with a well fitting rubber cork with a hole in it to take a short length of glass tube. Join the tube in the cork to the tube in the side of the box with a rubber tube. Place another sheet of glass in the bottom of the box, damp the print which is to be bleached and lay it in the box. Close the lid. Put two ounces of bleaching powder (chloride of lime) into the jar, pour in a cupful of accumulator acid, and close the jar at once. If this job can be done in the open air, all the better. If there is any leakage of gas, keep away until it has dispersed. When the print is sufficiently bleached, just open the lid and let the air blow away the gas, always being careful not to inhale.
The amount of gas which will be made by the quantities given here is not enough to give a dangerous concentration, but nevertheless it is not to be fooled with. Don’t do this job in a room with birds, fish, cats, dogs or children in it. Or even white mice.
BONE AND IVORY
Small bone and ivory objects—card cases, chessmen, statuettes, fans, needles, inlays and small carvings turn up from time to time in bad condition and in need of cleaning. Impregnate really badly broken or chipped or cracked pieces with melted paraffin wax, which will hold the piece together and preserve it. Warm the object first over a radiator or in an airing cupboard, and put it right into the runny wax. Lift it out after a few minutes and wipe off the surplus.
Ivory goes yellow with age especially if it is not exposed to light. Sometimes this colour is pleasant and is best left alone, but things like knife handles, piano keys or fan sticks do look better white. Make up a bleaching paste of whiting and 20 volume hydrogen peroxide and coat the piece with it. The paste must be stiff or the ivory will absorb too much liquid and swell. Stand the object out in the air and sunshine until the paste has dried, then wash it off and dry the piece thoroughly with a soft cloth. A little almond oil applied with a soft rag will leave a nice protective coating.
To clean bone and ivory which just needs dirt and dust removing from crevices, use methylated spirit on a duster, or on a soft brush. Never use water. If there are spots which won’t come off, try rubbing the spot with a little whiting and methylated spirit on a cotton wool swab on a cocktail stick.
Bone and ivory can be polished with tripoli, or rotten-stone or carborundum products, or with silica preparations and modern metal polishes.
Stick broken pieces of ivory together with Durofix or Araldite. Make sure the surfaces to be joined are clean, and bleach out any staining left by old glue as above.
BOOKS
The top edges of books get filthy and although loose dust can be removed with a soft brush or an old fashioned feather-duster, real dirt is hard to clear. Holding the book very tightly shut it so that only the top edges show, rub gently with fine sandpaper folded to the correct size. This could be rather too fierce for a valuable book, so try soft breadcrumbs, or all art eraser (see Fig. 6).
The edges of many old books are either gilded or painted, and it is quite easy to give these a new lease of life. Ordinary water colour paint mixed with size instead of water is brushed on. The book must be well cramped with the covers folded out of the way, and the exposed pages protected, or the paint may colour more than it is meant to.
To re-gild, kestoration Wax or Treasure Wax Gilt should be rubbed on the tightly closed edges with your finger, and then polished with a soft cloth to remove the surplus and make it shine.
Leather covers on books must be cleaned occasionally with a little leather polish such as Sheerwax, but remember that on most books the leather is almost paper thin, and cannot take too much rough handling. Very often old books are quite spoiled by r pieces of the leather being torn away to show the cardboard cover, or else the leather on the spine is split or perished. To mend these tears, cut out the bad parts, clean off the old glue and muck, gently lift and stick the new piece of leather into position, being careful to tuck the new edges under the old. The leather for this job should be as thin as possible, and do pare die tucked in edges carefully, so that the joins do not make a nasty bulge. For any decoration that has to be done, see the section on Leather.
Print on book titles and authors’ names with Indian Ink or Reeves Transfer Foil, which is used rather like carbon paper. You will probably find that it needs a little practice to make a neat job of the lettering, especially on the curved spine.
If a book has the side cover torn away from the spine, Sellotape X will make a strong lengdiwiscjoin, with a small gap left between the two edges, so that there is enough play left, when the book is closed. Sheets of coloured paper cut to size and pasted over the end page and the cardboard cover look neat. Scccotine or paperhanger’s paste are useful adhesives for binding and paper work.
Stained and damp pages are dealt with in the same way as prints (see section on cleaning prints), but this can be rather difficult without taking the book to pieces. When the odd page is dirty or stained, particularly at the begin- ning or end, a little gentle dabbing with carbon tetrachloride, petrol or benzine should remove most greasy marks and fingerprints. Wax is best dealt with by placing a piece of blotting paper under the spot, and ironing lightly with a hot iron.
If a book should happen to be dropped in the bath, dry it by putting tissue paper or sheets of blotting paper between the leaves, through half the book. Then put an even weight on the book and leave it in a dry place, perhaps in the draught of a fan heater or a hair dryer, but do not put it too near a radiator or fire. The current of air is necessary to carry away moisture. Treat the second half of the book the same way when the first has dried.
Mend torn pages with white paste (see recipe under Adhesives), as other glues will show either too grey or brown. On frayed or ragged overlapping edges, put a little paste on one surface, and place the torn sheet exactly over it. If a comer or edge of a sheet is missing, cut another piece of paper, similar in texture and colour, slightly larger than the missing portion, and stick it on to the torn piece. A tidier job is made by trimming the torn piece first. When a page is torn across the print, mend it by sticking the thinnest possible Japanese paper over the top. If the print is large and the lines well spaced, cut little strips of matching paper, and stick them in between the print, although this is horribly fiddly. The edge of a torn page should always be reinforced so that it will not tear again in the same place. Whole pages tom out of books are best repaired with long strips of matching paper pasted down the length of the tears. ScIlotape X can be used, but if there are quite a lot of pages out, it will make clumsy joins, and ordinary sellotape is not good as the edges of it stay sticky and pick up bits of dirt and dust, making a grey mark.
Insect infestation in books is dealt with under Inscas.
Anyone who has spent much time looking in junk shops will know that sooner or later a particular decision will have to be made. Is one to insist on buying only the perfect piece, the flawless jewel, which has come down to our time unscathed by time—that enemy of both man and his handiwork? Or is one to be content with something less than perfection, that which is flawed—though not irreparably?
If you take the first course and happen to have a taste for the best in furniture, pictures, pottery, glass, silver, or whatever, you will nowadays need a very long purse indeed. The fine things of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have soared in price to levels which would not have been thought possible even only five years ago. In the meantime collectors have turned their attention to the once despised nineteenth century; and Victorians is now as eagerly accepted for sale by great auctioneers like Sotheby’s and Christie’s as anything of earlier date.
Personally I have never felt especially impressed by ‘condition’ for its own sake. If a piece is what the trade calls ‘right’—that is to say genuine of its own kind, if whatever imperfections it may have do not seriously detract from enjoyment of it, I do not see why it should not take its place in a collection. After all, for a piece of china or furniture to have survived for two hundred, a hundred, or even fifty years without acquiring some sort of blemish, or show some signs of age, is a quite remarkable thing: it has certainly not happened to me. One suspects too, that those who seek perfection of this kind may be interested not so much in the appreciation of a particular objet d’art, as in appreciation of their investment—and I have always thought that there were many pitfalls in that kind of collecting.
A few years ago there came up for sale a famous collection of teapots, representative of the finest work of all the famous English factories. The reverend gentleman who put it together, however, could not possibly have afforded to do so had he not been content to accept the odd chip, crack or restored part. But these imperfections in no way spoilt the beauty and interest of the collection, which, though unique of its kind, had much instructive value for the general collector.
For me, therefore, if a piece has been skilfully and sympathetically repaired, with awareness of period and of the peculiar nuances of the original work, there would always be a place for it on my shelves or walls. And if you tell me that a repair or a repainting can be detected by ultraviolet radiation, I reply that one does not normally look at works of art through apparatus of that kind.
Before they buy, however, I think that collectors should inform themselves as to what can or cannot be done with anything which has been damaged or broken. Some things are really beyond all hope: they could never be restored in such a way as to give one the same kind of xsthetic appeal as the original, and the place for it—if there is a place for it—may well be in a museum. But there are many things which can be rescued, and ought to be before they deteriorate any further.
This, I think, is the value of a book like this. In showing how repairs can be done it tells one what repairs can be done, whether we do them ourselves with loving care or whether we leave them to the expert. There are not so many fine works of art about that we can afford to let them disappear without an effort of some sort.
What is junk? Something which its last owner discarded as worthless? Any old piece of furniture, china, metalwork, any old picture, print or scrap which has no intrinsic value? These definitions have no meaning today when the trade in ‘junk’ has reached international proportions and when some of the prices paid for hideous bits of bric-a-brac put them far beyond the reach of most amateur collectors. Once, a poke around a second-hand shop produced all kinds of unusual and interesting things for shillings and even for pennies. Pounds didn’t enter into it. Once you could go to auction sales and come away with car loads of discarded ‘rubbish’ which no one else at the sale wanted and for which the dealers, least of all the dealers, never bothered to bid.
Not any more. At every sale, in every junkshop, there lurks the man or woman with that indefinable look, that odd searching expression which proclaims that he or she is
‘in the trade’ and wi buy akinds of unlikely things just to turn them into other unlikely things or to restore them
and sell them as totally genuine survivals from the past, and as always, when the dealers get interested the amateurs have to get up very early in the morning!
The reasons why we have come to value these things are strange, but fairly simple. As we invent new designs for furniture, pots and pans, clothes etc. and enjoy new styles and fashions, yesterday’s style and the day before yesterday’s become hideous to us. How ugly now seems the clothes and furniture, the carpets and curtains, the chairs and the pictures of the thirties. And how ugly, in the thirties, seemed the things we designed in the twenties. Yet now, in the sixties, the things of the twenties become attractive again, some of them, and the Victorian excesses which we hated in the thirties, positively delight us now. Why does this happen? Is it because our modem designs get more and more simple and functional, with fewer curves and fussy bits, more and more straight lines and flat surfaces, more and more synthetic finishes, and less and less craftsmanship or hand work of any kind is done. The horrors of photographic wood veneers, which only need a wipe with a damp cloth, the plastic ‘working surfaces which every knife marks, are preferred to beautiful natural veneers which need a bit of polishing to keep them beautiful, and to scrubbed wood which needs a bit of elbow grease to keep it clean. So I believe some of us are coming to value the things which man has made with his hands out of natural materials as an antidote to our machine-turned, moulded, plastic world. And I don’t believe that the plastic rubbish of today will ever become the treasured junk of tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. We have gone right over the top, and many people are determined to salve what is left of the artifacts of our grandfathers. The very ugliness of some of the things has the appeal of individuality at the least. It may be claimed that a lot of Victorian and Edwardian and even Georgian junk was mass produced in the sense that numbers of copies of the same objects were made, and that any casting or turning or moulding techniques that were available were fully used. Nevertheless the materials themselves ensured that hand finishing was almost always necessary, and the machines were worked by men and not by other macliiiies. Designs were made by the minds of men and not by computers.
Ingenious people go to great lengths to make modem objects out of old junk, sometimes by taking things back to an even more original condition than they ever were before, when they were first made. I’m thinking of the vogue for stripping down wooden objects and oiling or waxing so that the grain alone decorates them; objects that were always stained or painted when they were first produced. It is only quite recently that we have realised that natural pine wood call be just as beautiful as natural walnut, or oak or mahogany. Our immediate forefathers thought that pine in its natural state was very ugly and only fit to be covered up. Anyone who had ever visited all alpine country knew differently, but nevertheless we remained very traditional. Taking the subject a stage further, there was a time when natural oak furniture was looked upon as being purely rural and only used by the yokels in the kitchen, and nothing could be elegant but inlaid mahogany or veneer or ormolu. All kinds of objects get turned into lamps nowadays, and old picture frames make fine mirrors and trays. Pianos turn into cocktail cabinets—there is a use for everything and anything. Is this because the hand craftsmanship, or even the time, that it takes to make these things cannot be found these days except at great expense? Labour was cheap when the junk was being made, and now we are taking advantage, years after the makers are dead and gone, of their sweated labour, their underpaid craftsmanship, which are just not available any more.
Lastly, as I discovered when I became involved in the art of restoring old cottages for modern living, you and I, amateurs in the sense that our jobs probably have nothing whatsoever to do with restoring things, get a great kick, an artistic satisfaction, out of mending something that seemed broken beyond repair, out of recreating something useful or decorative or interesting from something old, ugly and dull. The artist, the creator in all of us, can thus find expression even when we lack original talent. It may be in something as elemental as getting a good polish on a piece of filthy old brass.
Most of us are magpies at heart, and the collecting instinct which stimulates toddlers to collect little piles of stones, shells and sticks and string, the child to collect stamps or dolls and the teenager to collect gramophone records, stimulates the adult to collect whatever he or she can afford and finds pleasing. I know a man whose large Edwardian house (and lie needs one) is full of musical boxes, everything from tiny little singing birds to huge great mahogany things which come to coniplicated life and give out fantastic sounds in response to the necessary stimuli. Another man will collect powder flasks, buttons or little boxes, or flatirons, or porcelain. Most collectors begin by acquiring a piece of junk almost accidentally, perhaps by inheritance, or bought in with an odd lot, or just because it caught the eye, and that is the nucleus of a collection.
People can be divided into two groups; those who will take everything to the ‘expert’ to be restored or cleaned, and those who will go to great lengths to do the work themselves. I think that the true junk collector comes into the second category. The greater part of the fun for him is in the restoring—in being able to say, modestly: ‘yes, I mended that chair—it had three broken legs and six coats of paint, but the waxed natural wood does look rather nice, doesn’t it?’
There are limitations, of course, oil what can be done; limitations imposed by the necessity for expensive tools or materials, or processes which need equipment not usually found in even a well-equipped workshop (electro-plating tanks for instance). The one limitation that never seems to apply is that of knowledge, either of techniques or of materials.
Here another distinction has to be made. Properly speaking, restoration implies the recreating of an object so that it is exactly as it was when it was made. In the wider sense great arguments go on between the people and societies interested in the preservation of ancient things, and those who wish to restore them for actual use. To the purist, for instance, it is wrong when restoring a cottage to make structural alterations which are necessary to make it habitable in modern terms. To the purist it is wrong to restore an old piece of furniture by altering its original purpose, terrible to cut a whatnot in half and make two tables from it, even though it was useless as a whatnot. If a thing has intrinsic beauty then surely it is wrong to alter it out of recognition. There is a safeguard here in the sense that if you pay a lot of money for an antique you are unlikely to chop it about. Oil die other hand you might undervalue some inherited piece and destroy it by altering it.
How far is one justified in building up missing pieces of objectswith modern epoxy resins instead of restoring the missing part as nearly as possible with its original material? Museums do it all the time and are prepared to rebuild and remake shamelessly with modern materials to restore objects, although they make no secret of this. It is of course inipossible to lay down rules for these things. In any case the antique and jtuik trades are so full of fakes, composite objects, and reproductions with never any guarantee of authenticity, that it doesn’t matter a great deal, I suppose, how authentic your restoration work on junk is. The only thing that matters, it seems to me, is that the reproduction or reconstruction or restoration produces something which as nearly resembles the original as one’s capacities and the materials available allow. Never try to pass off any kind of restoration as original.
While in this book I have tried to include as many hints and ideas as possible, I have slued away from `tricks of the trade’. There are too many tricksters about
already.
Of course, with many perishable objects such as prints, preservation and protection against the ravages of the future is as important as restoration, and there seems to me to be no harm in using the most modem methods and materials available.
One or two general points must be made. First, that there is no substitute, really, for elbow grease, and this is in many cases the restorer’s most useful material, substance or technique! It may be easy to slosh acids and solvents around, but the damage they do may well outweigh the time they save. Second, many chemicals used are poisonous or corrosive, and the greatest care must be taken when using them to wear protective clothing, gloves etc. Such materials should be confined to the workshop and never used in the kitchen. All bottles and jars must be carefully labelled, and poisons should be kept under lock and key. A fire extinguisher must be part of every workshop’s equipment and a bucket of sand for extra fire protection isn’t out of place. Plenty of fresh water should be available, and a sink is almost essential. Electrical equipment must be used properly and wall plugs etc. should be professionally installed and maintained. Never use electric tools with two-pin plugs. Use three-pin plugs which include an earth. Never unplug electrical equipment without first switching off the main. Never use electrical equipment with wet or even damp hands.
Lastly, I must point out that although all the recipes and suggestions in this book are tried and tested, the success of each and every one depends to some extent upon the user. It is like cooking. Give two people the same recipe book and materials and ask them to cook the same dish and the results will invariably differ.
Because of the enormous variety of materials involved, and because it is not possible for the writer to know exactly what it is that the reader is intending to treat, there can be no absolute certainty that methods and treatments will work exactly as planned. The contents of this book are meant as a guide, to be intelligently used. I have left out some techniques that call for the use of highly toxic chemicals (with the exception of the bleaching box), and I have left out or only briefly described techniques which do require practical instruction, althoughi the borderline between skills which can be self-taught and developed by practice and those which have to be imparted on the spot by an expert, is impossible to define. It depends so much on the capacity and talent of the individual.
But it is junk you will be handling; it won’t be world-shattering if you do make mistakes. ‘There is so much pleasure in doing a good job that it is always worth a try. If you fail, well, that is too bad. If you succeed, that is wonderful, and oh, so satisfying.
Thanks. To write a book of this kind without picking other people’s brains is impossible, for one cannot bc.ui expert on everything; in fact the junk restorer must be a jack of all trades. Thanks are due, therefore, to all those who let me ask them questions about their working methods, and who gave me so much useful information. Thanks also to Ginette Leach whose help with the making and checking of the book was invaluable.
Using the book. The text is not divided into chapters, but set out with subjects in alphabetical order. I suggest that you look first in the indices for references to any specific subject, or material. There are two indices: the first refers specifically to materials and tools, and includes page references and names of suppliers and sources of the materials, so that in effect it replaces appendices; the second refers to the subject headings and methods, and is intended to lead you directly to the subject itself where you can find full details on cleaning and restoration.
Where various things come into the same general category they have been grouped together in that category rather than scattered through the book in alphabetical order. For instance the section headed Stone includes subsections of various kinds of stone. The sections on China, Furniture, and Metal are also comprehensive. This seems to me to be a more convenient way of arranging things than exact alphabetical order would have been.
The better you understand your business, the better prepared you are to write the business plan. Ideally, you will have thoroughly thought out your business long before you ever open your doors for sales. Too many entrepreneurs jump into business with both feet and don’t bother with understanding (let alone planning) until the water is rising. jumping into the deep end of the pool is not the best way to learn to swim. If you’re lucky, you won’t drown, but even if you make it out of the pool, the experience is likely to be remarkably unpleasant.
The Business Section
The first major part of your business plan should be a detailed description of your business. You’ll address your corporate entity choice, be it corporation or limited liability company. You won’t even consider using a sole proprietorship or general partnership, because, first of all, investors wouldn’t even bother to read the plan and, second, there is too much personal liability for you in a sole proprietorship or general partnership. To fully appreciate this, see my book Own Your Own Corporation (Warner Books, 2001).
Your detailed description will also include strengths and weaknesses, a description of your operations, location, personnel, records, insurance, and security.
For the business, the market, and the financials sections of your plan, it is best to introduce the section with a brief (as in one page) summary. From there, you can use more detail in each subsection. While the entire plan should be succinct, these summaries will allow interested parties to graze for pertinent information.
There are two questions you need to ask yourself about your business that color every part of this section, though their answers are never directly addressed in the plan:
• Why are you in business?
• What is your business?
If these seem like easy questions to you, either you’ve done a good job thinking through your business or you haven’t even started. We’ll hope for the former.
Why are you in business? How well do you know yourself—in particular, your personal motivations? When you decided to go into business, was it out of desperation (lost job, family illness, personal injury)?)? It’s okay for desperation to spur you into a new direction, but don’t let it rush you. Did you decide to go into business out of a desire for personal fulfillment (following a dream, helping others)? Many businesses are begun for just this reason, but if you don’t understand the realities of owning and operating a business, you aren’t likely to stay in business long enough to do you or anyone else any good. Did you decide to start a business in hopes of amassing great riches? This is another common reason, but chasing after dollars runs the risk of leading to early burnout and/or disillusionment. Understand your motivations, and you can guard against many a typical disaster.
What is your business? Don’t answer too quickly. Just because you ou sell office supplies, that does not necessarily mean you want to look and feel like all the competitors. Think about it: There are plenty of office supply stores out there. Most are better established than yours. Many will have lower prices than yours. So why should anyone go to Your store? Answer that question, and you will know what business you are really in. Do you offer faster service and delivery? Do you have a specialized staff that can help clients with organization, technology, or planning? What is it that your customers (or potential customers) say about your business when they recommend it to friends? What part of the idea for your business originally got you so excited that you Couldn’t wait to tell your family about it? When it comes to identifying the heart of your business, look to your own heart. Concentrate on what your business is rather than what it does. Think back to the spiritual mission and business mission section and ponder what higher purpose you have to serve that will differentiate you in your space and allow you to generate cash flow
With the answers to these two deceptively simple questions, you will hopefully find the key that unlocks the potential of your business idea—an identity that can’t be duplicated. And it is that identity that will garner you funding, investors, and customers. But first, we’ve got to overcome one of the toughest parts of business plan authorship: writing about your strengths and weaknesses.
MIKHAIL
Mikhail was stuck. He needed to finish his business plan in the next two days for a potential investor but couldn’t get past the next section on his template: strengths and weaknesses.
Strengths and weaknesses. How could he write about that?
“Our company’s strength is me. I’m the best taco maker on earth.”
He couldn’t write that, even if it was true. It seemed too brazen, like a tedious NFL show-off player dancing wildly in the end zone. That wasn’t Mikhail’s style.
And weaknesses? How was he supposed to handle that one?
“Our company’s weakness is that management has no idea how to write a business plan.”
Again, while true, it didn’t inspire much confidence.
Acknowledging his writer’s block, Mikhail left the house and walked down to Starbucks for a toffee latte something. He got in line behind Jill, a new friend who had done well in starting and selling several businesses. He told her of his barrier to completing the plan. She offered to help, and they sat down to brainstorm with their vessels of caffeine and sugar.
Jill agreed that in the business plans she had worked on, the strengths and weaknesses section had always been hard to write. But she noted it was a positive part of the process because it forced you to think about some crucial issues:
• Why would someone really want to invest in you?
• Just what are your strengths and weaknesses?
• Are your strengths common or competitive?
• Can your weaknesses be overcome?
While talking about Mikhail’s business, and after several latte refuelings, some headway was achieved. Mikhail did indeed make excellent tacos. He infused them with all sorts of unique combinations, from mangoes to margarita-marinated mahimahi. His strengths were both common (he was good at making tacos) and competitive (he made them better than anyone else around). Jill suggested he focus on these issues as his strengths. Mikhail didn’t have to be brazen to make such claims, she said. A section beginning with “Management believes that its strengths are found in its ability to prepare unique and flavorful tacos” would work.
The weaknesses section, she said, was the trickier one. Just as strengths came in two varieties, common and competitive, so did weaknesses: They were either common or catastrophic.
After reviewing his plans some more, Jill didn’t see anything that would stand out as a catastrophic weakness. Was there a risk that the entire country would turn away from Mexican food? Not likely. Was there a risk of mad taco disease? Again, not likely. But Jill did see two common weaknesses and, she said with a smile, it was in this section where one could turn a negative into a positive.
Mikhail made a great taco. The weakness, which was common to many new businesses, was that no one knew this. The company was weak for brand awareness. This, of course, could be overcome.
The other obvious weakness was that Mikhail was a recent Russian immigrant. Who would ever expect a former Moscow bicycle mechanic to be a creative genius when it came to Mexican cuisine?
Jill saw this possible weakness as a huge potential strength. The human interest angle alone—Russian immigrant/Mexican cuisine, only in America—would help turn a lack of brand awareness into a branding strength. Mikhail was on his fourth latte and saw her vision clearly. He wanted to get back home and start writing. Jill laughed and said she understood. She also asked to see the business plan when it was finished. She knew some people who might be interested.
Before we further discuss the strengths and weaknesses section, it is important to underscore a key element of the story. Business plans aren’t always (or best) written in a vacuum. When you are blocked or struggling with a section, clear your head and seek out the perspective, insight, or just different view of someone you trust. It is amazing what human interaction can do for breaking through a tough section. And, with the benefit of additional input and review, you will find yourself drafting a better plan.
Part of gaining an intimate knowledge of your business is understanding your strengths and weaknesses (also called Core Competencies and Potential Liabilities, or Competitive Advantages and Competitive Challenges, and often given its own section). Think back to everything you’ve ever learned about competition and marketing (or skip ahead and read Chapter 10 on marketing). At their most basic, competition and marketing are about exploiting the weaknesses of other businesses and/or playing to the strengths of your own business. Analyze your business and think like a competitor. What strengths would a competitor try to downplay or neutralize? What weaknesses would a competitor want to highlight?
Once you have identified strengths and weaknesses, you can begin to plan accordingly. Are there strengths that are currently underutilized? What might you do to take advantage of your unique attributes? Are there weak points that you can shore up—through training, strategic hiring, team building, organization, or planning? What can you do now to limit the marketing options of your competitors later? Focusing on strengths and weaknesses will lead to better decisions as you proceed.
Strengths
As discussed in Mikhail’s story, there are two basic categories of strengths a business can exhibit: common and competitive. A common strength is something you do well. A competitive strength is something you do better than others in your field.
How a company exhibits strength—through corporate vision, product, operations, marketing, or sales—may change from business to business but will inevitably fall into one of the two categories. Determining whether your strengths are common or competitive can be difficult. But knowing which they are can be extremely useful. A business can improve through common strengths. A business can dominate through competitive strengths.
What are your strengths? It shouldn’t be a tough question_ to answer if you have a compelling business strategy Challenge your idea’s reason for being if it doesn’t have clear strengths.
Consider that business strengths are noticed by two groups: competitors and customers. What they see will help you understand what you’ve got. Customers (hopefully) will notice strengths in individual products (lower price, higher quality, better variety) or through positive brand associations. A strong brand can encompass a number of individual products and enhance the perceived positives of all of them. For example, the Coca-Cola brand extends to and benefits Sprite, Diet Coke, and potentially even Mr. Pibb.
Operational strengths such as logistics may not be noticed directly by customers, but they will feel the effects of such strengths. Higher efficiency will mean lower prices, faster service, and fewer mistakes. Even if customers don’t know why your product or service is better. they will certainly notice the end result. So will competitors, and soon your strength may become a common business practice for an entire industry But the point is that if both customers and competitors are noticing these things, whether directly or directly¬. you should notice them, too. Practically speaking, they should be deliberate strategies in your business plan.
Sales and distribution strengths will likely not be noticed by customers. They won’t care how many stores carry your product or how good your contracts are. All they know is whether or not they want to buy your product or service. But they can’t buy if they are not exposed to it. Distribution controls that exposure. Sales come from an ability to turn exposure into commitment. As such, sales and distribution strengths are key and an area your competitors will be sizing you up on. If they are noticing your strength, so should you.
Unique leadership skills and corporate vision can create highly advantageous employee and vendor loyalty. They can also increase sales through good distribution relationships. There can be huge benefits from such skill and vision. That said, none of it may be noticed outside the corporate structure. Until, that is, your competitors wonder why you are kicking butt while they are sitting still. Then corporate vision and leadership will be noticed by everyone with whom you do business—from the letter carrier to the sales force to the customer. Do you notice it internally now? Have you developed it into a core competency that can be considered one of your strengths? It should all flow from your mission statement as a reflection of an organization’s leader. Think back to Rich Dad’s B-I Triangle, which outlines the mission, leadership, and teamwork as the three pillars of a successful business.
There are many more examples to consider. Maybe you are charismatic or have a gift for motivating others. Maybe your honesty engenders loyalty in those with whom you partner. Maybe you were an accountant in a past life and have a true talent for budgeting on a shoestring. Your personal strengths may translate quite well to your business. Don’t overlook any strengths you might have. In business, you need every one you can get.
Think widely about your strengths, Think about what you do well. Think about the strengths of your partners or team members. (For more information, see Blair Singer’s The ABC’s of Building a Business Team That Wins, published by Warner Books in 2004.) Think about what works well in your current business, if you have one. If you aren’t currently in business, you will need to do more of that creative thinking to try to see possible strengths you might show in the future. Be real and don’t fool yourself. Talk to people you trust about what they think your strengths are. Do any of these strengths really help your business? Do they lead to lowering costs or increasing sales? These are the types of strengths to include in your business plan.
Know your competition. Read their business plans. And keep in mind they may be reading yours. A business plan is no place for details that threaten your Competitive advantage. Check out your competitors’ advertising. Know their operations as intimately as you possibly can and see if they share your strengths. If they do, your strength is common. If they don’t, your strength may be competitive, and that’s good for you!
Once you know your strengths, you will need to understand the whys and hows of those strengths. Why is it a strength that you have developed a new way to track your office supply store inventory? Is it because it makes it possible to fill orders more quickly than your competition? Or is it because your system is so user-friendly for vendors that they give you a break on your contracts? Or maybe your tracking has opened up an entirely new route for getting your product exposed to customers.
How did your skill, service, product, or idea become a strength? Was it through innovative use? Was advertising a key? Did you discover it on your own through research or study? Or did you learn it from watching how another company does things? How did your customers become aware of the benefit of your strength to them? By understanding the howl and whys, you increase your chances of repeating your strengths in other areas while playing them up throughout the company and through customer awareness. The bottom line is this: Strengths are strengths because they serve customers, which results in strengthened profits.
• If you don’t possess the right skills or strengths for a business, communicate how you surrounded yourself with the right employees or advisors. You don’t have to be a great mechanic to own a thriving automative repair business. If you have great leadership and marketing skills you can hire great mechanics.
• Public company 10-K annual reports area great source of reference material for entrepreneurial business plan. They provide benchmark costs and strategies as well as relevant industry information. Securities laws require them to disclose information that is very helpful to entrepreneurs.
Weaknesses
Examining real or potential weaknesses is not nearly as much fun as examining strengths, but it is just as important. (Don’t you hate how that usually works?) And you sure don’t want to write down all your weaknesses, print them on good paper, and then hand them to other people to read.
The problem is that while this may not be a section you want to shout from the rooftop to potential investors or lenders, it is one of the most useful sections for you as an entrepreneur. Our greatest weaknesses are our blind spots, which we rarely see in ourselves. Most great entrepreneurs surround themselves with people who tell them the good, the bad and the ugly because confronting the brutal facts is the best way to achieve progress on those elements of the business that are holding you back. Novice entrepreneurs hide issues and great entrepreneurs seek to identify issues.
Just as with strengths, weaknesses fall into two general categories: common and catastrophic. Common weaknesses are those that you share with a lot of other businesses, such as start-up hurdles, learning curves, and cash flow. As long as you are generally as good as the industry standard, you’ll likely be okay, although you may not excel. Catastrophic weaknesses are those that consistently put you at the bottom of the pile. Another way to look at it is that common weaknesses are those that can or will be overcome. You will eventually learn how to use your inventory software or hire someone to take over those duties, you will eventually work out an efficient order fulfillment system, and you will eventually have enough money to kick off that dream ad campaign. Catastrophic weaknesses are those that you can’t or won’t overcome. These may include a fatal error in a software program that can’t be remedied, the use of someone else’s intellectual property, coming in second in the race to introduce new technology, and the worst weakness of all, arrogance.
Obviously, doing the footwork for your business plan should help you eliminate many of your common weaknesses before you begin your business or before you continue to the next phase of business. But the identification of catastrophic weaknesses should make you rethink your entire plan. Do you really want to put all of your time and energy into something that has a very high likelihood of failure? Aren’t there other businesses to pursue that have a greater likelihood of success? Some of the best business plans are the ones you throw in the garbage because you learned from them and moved on to a better idea. Fatal flaws usually don’t get better.
Just as with strengths, weaknesses can be perceived by customers and/or
competitors. Your weakness could be in poor product quality, noncompeti-
tive pricing, or lack of variety. Distribution may be your weakness if you can’t
keep your products on the shelves or on enough shelves to have an impact.
Operational weaknesses are frequent killers of great ideas. Many a creative person has thought up a fabulous idea only to be thwarted by the business realties of deadlines, inventory, budgets, cash flow, customer service, distribution, and management. Knowing your weaknesses in these areas going in will help you pick partners and personnel to fill in the gaps. Don’t be afraid to admit you might not know everything. You can always build a team that does.
When you focus on weaknesses, consider that perhaps your weakness isn’t so much ‘ Vour weakness as much as a competitor’s strength. If you are in an industry ruled by one or two brands, it will be hard to break in and then break out with your own brand identity. Advertising is key for brand identity. In order to build your unique identity, advertising needs to be effective and visible. There is a crucial interplay between vision and volume that will ultimately determine the effectiveness of an ad campaign.
Figuring out your weaknesses (or potential weaknesses if you have not vet begun your business) is done pretty much the same way you determined your strengths. Talk to people you trust. Ask these honest and trustworthy people what they think you could improve in your company, your knowledge base, and your interpersonal style. It will be hard to get an honest answer. People who like you may not want to tell you how irritating it is, for example, that you always wait four days to return a call. Emphasize to these people that you need to know now, before you quit your day job and sink your life savings into this idea. Or be honest in explaining that your current business is hitting hard times and that sugarcoating could mean its demise. Never be afraid to goad people into telling you the truth, even by making them feel guilty. It is that important. Of course, when you get the truth, take it gracefully—don’t get all defensive—and be effusive in your thanks so that the people who are honest with you will offer that same frankness if you need it in the future. If you pout and sulk because they suggested that your lack of punctuality is a business weakness, you are shooting your business (and yourself) in the proverbial foot. Getting honest feedback may not be pretty or fun, but if it leads to business success, it is certainly worth it.
Be creative in your thinking. Try to look at every single aspect of your business. Try to imagine your product going from inspiration to sale, step by step, through all the parts of your company, from R&D to construction to employee benefits to management to advertising to sales, all with an eye toward improvement. If you were the competition and had this kind of inside information, how would you use it? If you were an average consumer, what would you want to see done differently? If you were not the business owner, but only thinking of buying the business, what would you want to see changed before you signed on the dotted line? If you were the ad agency hired to promote the business, what aspects of the company would you downplay or ignore? If you were an employee, how would you rate the business?
Create your business on paper. List everything your business will need to
do (or already does). From hiring personnel to maintaining equipment, from
creating a filing system to choosing a system to track your stock—put it all
down on one side of the page. Next put some thought into which areas are
weak and assign a number or letter or stars or whatever suits your fancy to sig-
nify if the weakness is small, medium, or great. Then write out what it would
take to conquer each weakness. Finally, do a simple cost-benefit analysis and
decide which of your weaknesses are worth (in time or money) eliminating.
Some weaknesses you can live with, some you can’t. The bottom line: Look
for weaknesses that lead to lowered sales or increased costs—profit-eaters.
Once you have a good handle on where your weaknesses lie, fix what you
can, decide which weaknesses are truly important to your business, and put
your plan mayebe
them in your plan. Choosing which weaknesses to include in ~,
the hardest part of the preparation process. You don’t want to include so many that your business looks like a failure before it even begins, but you don’t want to have so few as to come off looking like a naive dreamer.
Every business has weaknesses. Seasoned professionals (the kinds you’ll be asking for money from) will be able to look through your business plan and see the holes. If you want to come off as a professional as well—as the kind of person who can take an idea and turn it into a successful business—you need to prove you share that ability to analyze your business needs.
By pointing out what others would find on their own, you prove your abilities. But, more important, putting weaknesses in the plan allows you to show how you plan to eliminate or work around them. You can list a weakness and follow it with a discussion of your plans for improvement, thus showing your problem-solving skills as well as your ability to plan for the future.
