Hi Guys,
I was pondering how many timber console radios a production could move out the door in a day.
Image Link
In this picture, I imagine a couple more lines behind the “camera” point of view, about a third of
the employees being involved with testing and QC, and doing little practical production,
so I would take a stab that 20-40 completed radios could be completed and checked in a day.

The reason I gave this thought is I have a radio that still has it’s QC label dated 1929.
It has a serial number 2369. Another of the same AWA I don’t know the date, but it’s serial is 7xxx.
The model stopped production 1932, but I still couldn’t date the second radio in my mind.

In one of Peter Lankshear's articles in Electronics Australia a story was run on the once-mighty Grigsby Grunow and the short-lived Majestic brand in the USA.

In the height of their success they were pumping over 5,000 radios a day out of their factory. Two goods trains arrived each day - one bringing in timber and other raw materials to make receivers and the other to take radios to various parts of the US for retail sale. Margins were small but because of the high output everything had to run like clockwork. Retailers had to sign contracts to take a certain number of radios and shift them ASAP. Suppliers had to meet delivery deadlines strictly. Anyone falling out of line with the 900kg gorilla was brought into line or their contracts cancelled.

Apparently it was hard going for the life of Majestic and for some reason the company fell on hard times and disappeared from the radar screen. I guess it dispels the myth that a company can be too big to fail.

One thing is for sure though, 5,000 radios a day is good going, especially with all the timber that had to be cut, smoothed and shaped into table and console cabinets, then drilled, stained and fitted out. There would have been numerous potential production bottlenecks for them and indeed most brands around the world. Here in Australia, a large manufacturer - I'd be thinking that an output of 5,000 a month would be closer to the mark in the 1930s. This is a guess though.

I guess it dispels the myth that a company can be too big to fail.

I think the saying goes - "The bigger they are, the harder they fall".

5,000 radios a days from one factory is a stupendous amount. Even for the size of the US market I couldn't possibly see how that would of been sustainable.

In the case of radio manufacturing in Australia during the 1930's I'd think 5,000 radios per month would of been the combined output of all factories nation-wide.

Here is some information and data from the Mingays Radio Trade Annuals from 1935 & 1938 that will give you some idea of how many radios were produced here based on licence figures.

A Review of the Australian Radio Industry

^ Great stats!

The great chart above shows the number of radios in operation, so you have to look at the year to year difference to see the production number.
It is an impressive number, some 200,000 from 1934 to 1936.
Harold

Also those licence increase figures don't account for those updating their radio sets. According to some stats in the 1939 Radio Trade Annual it is estimated that anywhere between 180,000 & 300,000 radios were made and/or sold in Australia during 1938. For a country with population at the time of about 7 million these figures are quite impressive.

The Australian economy had improved somewhat by the late 1930's. As a result the public were most likely updating their depression and pre-depression era TRF radio sets to more modern Super-Hets.

Listening licence details 1938
Reviewing Radio Trade 1938

Monthly total by states for 1938 gives a breakdown of licence renewals, new licences & cancellations.