In this brief archival interview, Jim Penman recounts the origins of his business’s first flyer and the logo that later defined the franchise. He explains that in 1986, while mowing lawns and doing tree pruning at age 34, he distributed a simple flyer that generated strong customer response. The image on that flyer inspired the eventual graphical logo when the franchise was launched. The conversation also touches on his early, hazardous experiences with a chainsaw and the nostalgic framing of this material as a "rookie NBA card" of his business history.
So we found this one in the archives. We got this Jim's history thing we're going to do. We've got heaps of stuff which we found last week, and this is the one we put online and people loved it because it's almost like a rookie NBA card, first time coming to league.
Well, this was before it was franchised. This was when I was actually mowing lawns, and I used to put this one out and people would ring up and I would go— some of my subbies might go too. That picture there, I found that when we put it on the leaflets, it actually got a better response. So that's what started the idea of the logo. And then when we launched the franchise, we just turned that basic image into a graphical form.
And do you remember how old you were here or what year this was?
1986, something like that.
'86, that was before I was born by a couple of years.
So I would have been like about 34 at the time. Tree pruning and lopping. With the tree lopping, I must say I was pretty bad at that. I almost killed myself with a chainsaw.
Look at the journey. It's a bit of history. We're going to frame that up. I'm going to do a couple of these pictures.
You know what, I'd go back to that guy there and say what I know now. So much faster to get where I am.
