These bespoke machines were killer products in 1984
This is Part II of a 3 part series on a company I once worked for called "Xenotron"; this name was chosen by the start-up owner because it means in Latin "Strange Machine", and let's face it, the history of the world since the industrial revolution has been dominated by the advent of strange machines in large numbers; steam engines, telephones, production lines, cars, aircraft, tanks, bombs, television, computers etc. At the introduction of each have been innovators, entrepreneurs and speculators; all people who helped make the world what it is today.
The PDF's of Part I and Part II can be found here and here respectively. Below I reproduce the first section of the introduction to Part II. My first blog post introducing this series can be found here. This story in part explains why I always say "I'm in favour of the Free Market, but with a 'But'....."
The PDF's of Part I and Part II can be found here and here respectively. Below I reproduce the first section of the introduction to Part II. My first blog post introducing this series can be found here. This story in part explains why I always say "I'm in favour of the Free Market, but with a 'But'....."
The story so far
In
Part 1 of this history we saw how innovative technology company Xenotron had
come to the fore in the printing industry as a result of it marketing a killer product:
Viz: A unique combination of electronic hardware and software facilitating page
and ad make up WYSIWYG style on a computer screen.; this device was called the
Xenotron Video Composer or XVC. In
1976 when this proprietary product first appeared on the market nothing like it
had been seen before. In Part I I
suggested that the introduction of Xenotron’s XVC was comparable with the printing press revolution
of 15th century; well, I like
to think so as I had a small part the play in it! (No, make that a “tiny
part”!). But at the very least the product was revolutionary and original
enough to ensure Xenotron’s initial fast growth. However, by the mid-1980s the
technological goal posts were on the move again: Xenotron’s growth meant that its
organisational overheads were starting to balloon and the market had changed
and slowed. In particular, on the horizon loomed the need to adopt standard
platforms and become a systems integrator for printing companies who were now
looking for single vendor solutions to system wide problems; this contrasted
with Xenotron’s initial “one-trick-pony” XVC act (Although to be fair Xenotron
did increase its repertoire of tricks). Xenotron’s
initial big profits were plummeting and just breaking-even became a challenge. To meet this challenge a new trouble shooting
CEO was called in, Danny Chapchal, who had a CV of nursing back to health
ailing companies. One of his first acts was to sell Xenotron to the German
printing company, Dr. –Ing. Rudolf Hell of Keil.
In
this second part of the Xenotron adventure I will be looking at Xenotron’s progress
under its two “doctors”: namely, Danny
Chapchal whose initials were appropriately “D R” and who was billed in
Lithoprinter as a “Company Doctor” (See pages 7 & 8), and of course its
buyer Dr. Hell. Could these doctors
rescue Xenotron from the bottomless pit of free market oblivion? Well, it’s no spoiler to reveal that the
answer to that question was, in the end, “No”. But spoiler or no spoiler I’m going
to tell the story anyway because that story is less about the final outcome
than the “how” and the “why” of that outcome. In
particular, this story gives a perspective on what it’s like to be inside the
ravages of a typically capitalist scenario of changing technology and changing
markets. Here the demands of the market, demands sourced in human acquisitional
motivations, often find themselves ill at ease with other human values rooted
in human social needs. More comments on that subject can be found below.
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