EKCO

The company's founder Eric Kirkham Cole was born in July 1901 at Prittlewell, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, and was educated at Southend Day Technical School, followed by a three-year apprenticeship. He joined his father's business in fitting electrics to houses. Cole and his future wife Muriel Bradshaw started out making radio sets in 1922 in a rented room in Westcliff-on-Sea, at a rate of about six a week, which were all battery powered as per the norm at the time.

William Streatfield Verrells, a schoolmaster and freelance journalist from Southend-on-Sea, wrote an article in a local newspaper asking if it was possible to power a radio set from the mains electricity supply rather than batteries. Cole saw a possible business opportunity and set about building his battery eliminator, the H.T. Eliminator, which he later demonstrated to Verrells. Suitably impressed, Verrells joined Cole in a business venture, with Cole manufacturing the battery eliminators, and Verrells marketing them with both Cole, Verrells and Bradshaw selling sets by knocking on doors in the town that had a radio aerial outside their property. Cole married Muriel in 1925 and they would go onto have two boys.

In 1926 a private company E. K. Cole Ltd was formed with Verrells as chairman and Cole as vice-chairman, and were joined on the board by local businessmen Mr Maxwell, the owner of Peter Pans Playground, builder Mr Manners and milkman Mr Pring. With the extra funding that was raised, the company set up a new factory behind 803-805 London Road, Leigh-on-Sea in 1927, employing around 50 people. After further expansion, E. K. Cole Ltd became a public limited company in 1930, and moved to a spacious new factory called the Ekco Works at Priory Crescent, Southend-on-Sea, the first large factory in Britain intended specifically for manufacturing radio receivers. The company also began to concentrate on the manufacture of mains powered radios rather than battery eliminators which were becoming obsolete, bringing in John Wyborn from Marconiphone as their chief engineer and Michael Lipman as production engineer. The company was also revolutionary in using Bakelite for its radio cases instead of wood, which was the norm.

The company suffered a major financial setback in 1932, when a fire swept through its research and development laboratories. The blaze destroyed much of the design work for the company's new range of receivers.

Ekco launched its first car radio at the 1934 Radiolympia exhibition. Another important development for the company was the introduction of bakelite cabinets for its radios. Initially these cabinets were made for the company in Germany by AEG, however the introduction of high import duties on the cabinets in 1931 led Ekco to establish its own bakelite moulding shop adjacent to its Southend-on-Sea works. The company employed architects such as Serge Chermayeff and Wells Coates to design its bakelite radio cabinets. By 1934, the company had a turnover of more than £1 million.

In 1935 Ekco made a substantial investment in Scophony Limited, the developers of the Scophony projection television system. Although the system showed great promise, its development was halted by the Second World War, and not resumed postwar. In 1936, Ekco and Marconi set up Marconi-Ekco Instruments as a jointly owned company to combine their activities in measuring instruments, diathermy, and electro-medical apparatus with premises at Southend and Chelmsford. In 1941, Eric Kirkham Cole announced that they had sold their share in the business to Marconi.

Ekco merged with Pye in 1960 to form a new holding company, British Electronic Industries Ltd, with C.O. Stanley as chairman and E. K. Cole as vice-chairman. The following year Cole resigned from the board and retired. He died on 18 November 1966 in the Bahamas due to a bathing accident, his wife Muriel having predeceased him in 1965. In 1961, Ekco formed two companies, Ekco TV and Radio and Ekco Heating and Electrical to market their products.

British Electronic Industries became Pye of Cambridge in 1963, was put up for sale in 1966, and in the same year Pye closed the Southend-on-Sea factory (but maintained its car radio repair workshop until 1977) as part of its restructuring plan. Philips Electrical Industries attempted to purchase the business but was blocked from buying the company outright by the then Trade Secretary Tony Benn,

and would only allow them to purchase 60% of the shareholding. Philips created Pye Holdings to manage the group, and in 1976 completed the purchase of the remaining shares. By the early 1970s, the Ekco brand had all but disappeared from electronic products.