Early Production in the UK

William Moss ended up importing so much product from Upright that in 1955 they began manufacturing the product in the UK under an exclusive manufacturing licence from Upright. They formed a new subsidiary company called Access Equipment Ltd and created the brand name Zip Up. They opened a factory in Hemel Hempstead and it was headed up by John Rusling. The product was interchangeable with, but slightly different dimensionaly from, the Upright original product. Once again, the product was a stair tower with folding sections. The new company proved very successful and sales boomed but the original exclusive licencing agreement between UpRight and William Moss was initially only for five years. At this point having seen how well their product was selling across Europe Upright decided to start manufacturing in Europe themselves. After a false start producing in Bergamo Italy they moved their entire plant to Dublin in Ireland and started to manufacture there. John Rusling used this opportunity to leave the Zip Up operation in Hemel Hempstead and set up as a distributor in the UK trading under the name John Rusling. His sales operation was also based in Hemel Hempstead and imported its equipment from Upright in Dublin. At the same time UpRight Ireland were setting up other sales companies across Europe.

The inevitable competition and friction that resulted from this arrangement spurred a great deal of product development particularly into the design of fold out assemblies and pump up towers. It also encouraged both organisation to pursue the one off “specials” market and large drawing offices were built up by both companies to develop these. It also brought about the development of span towers as we know them today with their separate components rather than the folding stair units that had previously dominated the market. Access Equipment Ltd with their links with a large construction company started to heavily promote their products into the building trade where span towers thanks to their lesser vulnerability to damage had greater appeal .