Thread: What happened to Wolf?

Dear Gerhard and other Wolf collectors, My son has just drawn my attention to the various posts you have made regarding Wolf tools. I am delighted to see your interest in these products as I was an executive of the company for a number of years from the late 1960's to the end of 1982 when Geoffrey Wolfe sold the company to Dobson Park Industries who had shortly before this time purchased Kango tools.

Initially I was operating in the UK for the company, then took over our Scandinavian operation and spent the last seven years of my time with Wolf as Managing Director of our South African operation.

During our "Sapphire years" there was a real buzz within the company as we were so proud to be selling a really good British made product throughout the world, and making a very reasonable contribution to overseas earnings during the "Ted Heath years".

I always recall my meetings with Geoffrey Wolfe as i reported directly to him, and the fact that it was always very difficult to inform him of any product problems we were experiencing in the field, as he could not accept our tools were anything other than the very best, which in the main they were but with the odd exception. For example when we introduced the grey bodied Sapphire range (ie Sapphire 70 etc) with GRP mouldings, we had serious problems with bearings turning within the housings. Similar problems affected the first of the grinderettes when we went from the Makita supplied version (AG4) to our own 4578 models, i remember clearly a failure rate in excess of 20% which was overcome by replacing the gearbox with a cast metal product.

I still have a couple of briefcases full of internal product development memos which i still find interesting reading to this day!!

I have recently commenced upon a "nostalgia trip" and have myself been purchasing a number of our old tools, mainly the Sapphire range as that was the main period of my time with the company.

As a matter of interest, in South Africa we produced our own metal (homeworker) cabinets which contained a sapphire 76 drill complete with the full range of attachments, orbital sander, drill stand, circular saw, jigsaw etc plus a range of hand tools, chisel, screw driver etc. These sold very well indeed and really helped us with the sale of our domestic range.

We also found it very difficult to sell the 100mm grinderette in South Africa as all the large operators had vast stocks of 115mm discs and were using every make but ours. To overcome this I introduced an "add on" which was given away with every grinderette which contained a guard to accomodate a 115mm disc and an adaptor to take the shaft from 16mm to 22mm. I hadn't told Geoffery of this idea and i remember one evening him phoning me at home to ask how the South African associate was selling so many grinderettes. I sent him a sample pack and although i got my knuckles rapped having not obtained approval from the board, he loved the idea of this modification and it became offered throughout the rest of our associates.

I am in Bergen Op Zoom in Holland from the 10th-14th August and if you are near that area it would be nice to see your collection.

Kind regards

What a fabulous nostalgic link and connection.

Regards
Paul