History > Fac Facts

Fact #1 - Garrod & Lofthouse

Garrod and Lofthouse printed many early Factory albums, singles and other items. They were responsible for the construction of various classic sleeves bearing the inscription G+L. The company went into liquidation in the mid-nineties.

Fact #2 - The Factory Catalogue

The Factory cataloguing system, whilst apparently disorganised and without pattern holds many hidden charms. The last digit of the numbers show many groupings - 1 for major events and buildings, 2 for Happy Mondays, 3 for Joy Division / New Order, 4 for Durutti Column, 5 for ?, 6 for Factory Classical; also other numbers hold further logic - Fac 289 Advertising / Campaign Technique was in February 1989 (2/89 geddit?), the bucket on the Styal Mill water wheel is Fac 148 - it is 1 of 48 buckets on the wheel; Fac 24 A Factory Quartet featured 2 records and featured 4 artists (it was also 2 x 12" records!). The video for Fac 123 'The Perfect Kiss' by New Order was assigned Fac 321. There is no Fac 69. The last FAC number chronologically was FAC 501 which Tony Wilson allocated to his own coffin.

Fact #3 - Factory Boxed Cassettes

Always keen to offer something new and different for the record-buying public, Factory launched a series of boxed cassettes for a limited section of its roster. These came in attractive rainbow colour-themed, 'hessian' feel, extra-large sized boxes containing miniature replicas of the original artwork and became instantaneously an essential items for collectors; the rarest boxes are Substance by New Order (which strangely seemed to be mainly available through Woolworths), Educes Me by Wim Mertens and both Section 25 issues; the full listing of cassettes in colour-coded order goes as follows:

Red - The Durutti Column
[Fact 14c - The Return of the Durutti Column]
[Fact 44c - LC]
[Fact 74c - Another Setting]
[Fact 84c - Without Mercy]
[Fact 164c - Valuable Passages]

Orange - Happy Mondays
[Fact 170c - Squirrel and G-Man 24 Hour Party People Plastic Face Carn't Smile (White Out)]

Yellow - Wim Mertens
[Fact 190c - Educes Me]

Light Green - The Railway Children
[Fact 185c - Reunion Wilderness]

Dark Green - Section 25
[Fact 45c - Always Now]
[Fact 90c - From The Hip]

Light Blue - A Certain Ratio
[Fact 135c The Old and The New]
[Fact 16c - The Graveyard and the Ballroom]
[Fact 166c - Force]

Turquoise - Quando Quango
[Fact 110c - Pigs and Battleships]

Purple - Joy Division
[Fact 10c - Unknown Pleasures]
[Fact 25c - Closer]
[Fact 40c - Still]

White - New Order
[Fact 50c - Movement
[Fact 75c - Power, Corruption and Lies]
[Fact 100c - Low-life]
[Fact 150c - Brotherhood]
[Fact 200c - Substance]

Notes

All boxes are covered in a "hessian/linen cloth", and contain re-workings of the original album release artwork. An edition of Fact 130 The Wake 'Here Comes Everybody') was scheduled for release but was not issued in a light brown/gold box. An Of Factory New York mail-order leaflet lists a (light green) boxed cassette release for Fact 24 'A Factory Quartet' but this too was not issued. This was also trailed in a Factory/Ikon advertisement from 1986. According to Phill Pennington, who worked at Peter Saville Associates at the time, Peter Saville and Martha Ladly chose the colours from a selection of cloth swatches. There is no real reason behind any of the colours except that they liked them.