In 1924 a company was formed by Mr Albert Williams called The Express Typewriter Company. As you can imagine, in those days typewriters were seen to be at the cutting edge of technology. The Express Typewriter Company flourished throughout the late 1920s and into the mid-30s and became established within the industry both selling and maintaining typewriters.
In 1949 Albert’s son Peter joined the company with the ambition to grow the company. Shortly after Peter joined, the company name became Peter Williams (Office Equipment) Limited, reflecting the direction the business was going in.
In the 1950s, Peter met Terry Batley, who joined the company initially as General Manager. This would be the start of a business relationship that lasted over 40 years. In the 1960s and 70s the company went from strength to strength, adding a whole portfolio of office products to its range. One of those products was a ‘T’ shaped planning system called Strafoplan. This product became a very influential part of the Peter Williams Office Equipment group and they enjoyed considerable success selling to industry and commerce.
First steps in AV
In 1976, Peter Williams and Terry Batley set up a separate company called Cumbermay Limited, Kevin Batley became the company’s first employee. Cumbermay’s focus was on selling a planning board to resellers. This became the forerunner to Sahara as it is today.
Over the years, Cumbermay continued to develop its product line, graduating from planning systems to whiteboards and notice boards moving into the AV channel when the company adopted Rail Systems, which were popular at that time in the AV market. In 1988 the brand Sahara, used mainly to describe the range of whiteboards and rail systems, became so well known that the decision was made to drop Cumbermay and focus on the Sahara brand..
In the early 1990s Mr Terry Batley retired, followed by Mr Peter Williams, who retired at the end of 1999. At that time, the activities of Peter Williams Office Equipment decreased significantly, and were merged into the Sahara business, which by then had developed a wide range of presentation products selling into the office products, AV and IT channels.
In the late 1990s Sahara started to manufacture more and more of its own products, investing heavily in producing not just whiteboards, but steel products. In 2002 Sahara introduced its first interactive whiteboard – Cleverboard. Due to the dominance of the two major brands in the local market, the company decided to concentrate on developing the export market.
Projectors
In 2005, Sahara was the first company to address the issue of projector security in the education market, with the orange protector which was copied by all other major brands who introduced orange projectors.
In 2008 Sahara launched the world’s first 65” LCD display with integrated touchscreen capabilities. This was the first product to offer a cost effective solution for this kind of technology. Sahara today is the UK market leader in interactive flat panel displays with the product range constantly evolving. All interactive products are driven by the company’s software – Lynx, Wordwall and DisplayNote. Sahara continues to invest heavily in the development of this technology, which is now rapidly replacing interactive whiteboards throughout schools in the UK.
The company, be it Peter Williams Office Equipment or Sahara, has always evolved throughout its history, never standing still representing manufacturers products and developing its own brands over its long history.
