Surviving 37 years in business in a time that has seen a rapidly changing business environment due to the introduction of the internet, cheap imports, a financial crisis, floods and a global pandemic is no mean feat. Yet Alan Magnay (or AJ as he is commonly known) has achieved that number and is still going strong.

This is the story of the man that "can make a buck out of anything".

Ann and AJ met 5 years ago (their inside ongoing joke) at the ages of 22 and 24 in Feb 1991, the weekend before Valentine's day.

Ann was literally the girl next door, when she moved in with a girlfriend that was right next door to where AJ lived in Casino Street. They have two children Lauren and Amber nearly 10 years after his first daughter Krystal by his previous partner and 4 grandsons.

AJ and Ann have been partners in life for 29 years now.

The Magnay family have a rich heritage around the Northern Rivers with AJ’s Mum and Dad being from Green Pigeon (north of Kyogle) before they moved to Lismore in Ballina Street.

“He and his brothers were born in Green Pigeon”, AJ explained, “Pop got a job at the Post Office so in we came.”

“My grandfather Bert worked at the Post Office all his life, I can’t remember him having another job.”

“And his brother was the Post Master General.”

“My parents met at one of the old Hall Dances they had back in those days in Lismore.”

‘I was born at the Lismore Base Hospital in 1962. Followed by my two sisters Lynette, she’s the adopted one and Toni”.

“It’s a family joke about Lynette being adopted. She is the only one without red hair, it’s a mousy colour.”

“Dad ended up as a plumber. He worked for Sidney & Hacking in Keen Street then for another mob where Car-Align is in Woodlark Street. Back in those days plumbing was heavy duty work with ceramic pipes, welding, digging septic tank drains by hand with a pick and shovel. This ended up causing him some pretty severe back problems.”

“We grew up in Brewster Street then left a few years later and moved to Wollongbar. Dad was having troubles with his back so we rented a house from Colin King, that man never wore any shoes, toughest feet of anyone I have known, like leather.”

School Years

“The old primary school was near the water tower, there were two classrooms. One for class 1, 2 and 3 and another for years 4, 5 and 6.”

“It was pretty relaxed, you didn’t have to wear shoes if you didn’t want to.”

“I had to walk 5k’s to school and 5k’s home every day unless Dad was going into town at the same time. When I got a push bike it made the journey a lot quicker.”

“I can remember getting the cane one day, the teachers got sick and tired of hearing me say “nothing sir” when he asked me what I was doing. After the tenth time he lost his patience and I got the can on suspicion.”

“The last two years of primary school , we moved to Ballina Primary School. I was at the public high school which was next to the Conniewackers (what the local Catholic school kids called it in the day).”

“I was the prime target for bullying in high school, a talkative red haired smart alec but I had cousins at the same school who were state champion boxers. If kids were starting to pick on me the kids were were quickly warned to lay off.”

Starting Work

“At the age of ten I started doing a paper run in Ballina. Mum and Dad never had much money, Dad was always crook with his back, so if you wanted some money you had to go and earn it.”

“I had a morning paper round Monday to Friday and a Sunday round too. You would blow your postie whistle at caravan parks and in the pub and people would come and buy my paper. As with all redheads ‘Blue’ was my nickname from everyone back then.”

“In the afternoons I would work at a friend’s fruit market shop packing potatoes and onions.”

“At 16 I left school. I wasn’t a good student, was reasonable at maths but average at everything else, I just wasn’t interested. I did like manual arts though.”

“My first full time job was at a supermarket. When I turned 17 someone would leave and they would get me to manage the place but this was way too much stress so I packed my bags and went to Sydney. This lasted 3 months as I moved from house to house while working in the Sutherland Shire as a storeman and packer. I didn’t like the big smoke so I came home.”

“I went back to packing, this time at night at Woolies then a job came up at a Funeral Directors digging holes and cutting grass for 2 years.”

The Turning Point

“A man called Jim Hensley owned a few sheds and he had one that needed to be dismantled. I asked a mate of mine I met at Woolies if he was interested to come and help. We paid the guy $500, went in and bowled it over in 4-5 weeks, advertised it in the paper and sold it for three grand. That was the start of my career.”

“We’ve always been scrounges I suppose, dad would go to the tip and mum would go where have you been?

Me: To the tip.

Mum: But you left 3 hours ago. I thought you only had one load to take.

Me: Yeah, we do mum but we had 3 loads to bring home.

“In those days you could scavenge at the tip and take anything home with you.”

“Our next job was a house in Lennox Head where you could keep the materials and what you could salvage and that’s how you made your money. This was 1982 coming into 1983, I was 21.”

We did really well out of the building making $500 a week each while at the supermarket we were getting about $80. We were working hard for our money doing the demolition with pointers from my dad and uncle. I had to learn how the structure worked and learned that you had to pull it down backwards.”

“I started AJ Magnay in this same building in 1983 (cnr Macaulay and Lake Street, North Lismore).

It was me and my ex-partner at the time. I didn’t know anything about business. I had $2000 saved up and was thinking about getting a building. Pop knew a guy who had one so I approached him to rent the building and the back yard for $80 a week.”

“It cost me $500 for a caravan chassis, then I would go to some auctions in Brisbane to buy some stock for another $500. I thought his is going along easily until the owner of the building turned up with a lease for me to sign. I never knew anything about signing a lease with 4 weeks up front rent plus another $500 to draw up the lease. All of a sudden I was down to my last hundred bucks.”

Back then advertising was very simple. You had one newspaper, one tv station and one radio station. I would just put a few ads in the Northern Star and people would come and see what I had to sell. At the time I could only fill half the shed and just laid it out on the floor.”

“People would ask “how much for that?” and I would reply 5 bucks or 2 bucks, they would buy it and it went from there.”

“We would go to a few auctions at Weirs Auctioneers, some junk sales or people would talk to builders who would say Magnay will come and clean up your site. We did that for a few years.”

“I got to be known as the ‘Dollar Man’ for a while. When I was at the auctions and they couldn’t sell some stock they would combine a few items and still couldn’t sell it so I would go up to them say “I’ll give you a dollar”. So, if they couldn’t sell some stuff then Magnay will take it for a dollar.”

“Then I started to go to the auctions and timber yards and the manufacturers to get factory seconds. Back in those days, no one did factory seconds. At the same time a lot of hippies came north and built their own houses with material they’d buy from us. They still come in and get bits from us 30 years later.”

‘We started doing more houses and expanded very quickly, basically we exploded within a couple of years.”

(Inside AJ Magnay's today)

Advertising Has Changed

“About this time Peter Butcher was working at the radio station. He came in and said there is a guy who used to work in Sydney doing a special jingle offer for $800 to $900 and said I should do it. The guy came in and wrote down points about toothpicks to railway sleepers and even kitchen sinks. When it came back we loved it straight away and started humping it on radio, every hour for months.”

“We had people saying ‘that bloody ad Magnay, that bloody ad’. It was an unbelievable investment, the best I have ever made. I still have that jingle on an old reel to reel.”

“Advertising is much more complicated nowadays. You have 3 TV stations now, the introduction of the remote control, recording devices, Pay TV, the internet has given us Netflix and Stan then there’s social media and every other platform. It just goes on and on.”

“In the heyday, about the mid 1990’s we had sales up and up every year. Normal retail was having a hard time which is when we would boom because we were selling items at half price then we started selling factory seconds. We were making good money.”

Bunnings

“The worst time for our business was when Bunnings came to Lismore after it bought BBC Hardware in 2001. Around the same time the government lowered import taxes so the cost of products coming from overseas cost less than we manufactured it for. It levelled the playing field for imports.”

“In those days you had 7-8 hardware shops in Lismore now there’s just one, Bunnings although JH Williams, the old Hurfords, sells to tradies up in Goonellabah.”

“It is hard for local businesses to compete with the multi-nationals because of their buying power. Who can afford $1 million worth of stock a month? I remember when I could sell a second hand toilet suite for $100, now I can’t even give them away as pot plant holders for a garden.”

“There is so much really cheap stuff from China or Vietnam being sold brand new but the quality is crap. People won’t spend $10 on a good quality product, they will buy the cheap brand new product.”

“We’ve seen a lot of businesses come and go during the last 37 years. We must be the most stubborn. We feel a responsibility to our workers which is 2-3 people now. In our heyday that was 12 full time people.”

“We’re always ducking and weaving trying to figure out what the next big trend will be.”

“That’s why we’re having this sale of up 50% off selected items in our back shed because I want to stock more carpets, carpet tiles and vinyls. I can get brand new stuff that is cheaper than the second hand stuff.”

“If I think I can make a dollar then I’ll be there.”

(AJ Magnay in North Lismore, the same building for 37 years)

This has been AJ’s thinking for the last 37 years so why not the next 20?

You can find AJ Magnay at the corner of Macaulay and Lake Streets, North Lismore.

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