Factory Records was a Manchester based British independent record label, started in 1978 by Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus, which featured several prominent musical acts on its roster such as Joy Division, New Order, A Certain Ratio, The Durutti Column, Happy Mondays, and (briefly) James and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. The label employed a unique cataloguing system that gave a number not just to its musical releases, but to artwork and other objects.

All the label’s releases (both music and video) were given a catalogue number of the form FAC followed by a number. This numbering system was also applied to other Factory “productions”, including posters (FAC 1 advertised a club night), The Haçienda (FAC 51), a hairdressing salon (FAC 98), a broadcast of Channel 4’s The Tube (FAC 104), sellotape (FAC 136), a bucket on a restored watermill (FAC 148), the Haçienda cat (FAC 191), a bet between Wilson and Gretton (FAC 253), a lawsuit filed against Factory Records by Martin Hannett (FAC 61)^[3], and a radio advertisement (FAC 294). Similar numbering was used for Factory Benelux releases (FAC BN or FBN), Factory US releases (FACTUS) and Gap Records Australia releases (FACOZ) but the numbers were restricted to record releases.

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