What would Commodore UK have done?

[tokyoracer]

Your thinking of the french I think

No they just do a half arsed job all the time. Just got to look at my Escom 1200 for a fine example. :lol:

[Tahoe]

I actually hold Commodore UK in very high regard, they were probably the best maketing division of the whole of Commodore. I wouldn't be surprised if Commodore in one form or another would still be around if that deal had gone through. The Cartoon Classics, Desktop Dynamite, Epic, Weild Weird an Wicked and Critical Zone packs were thing we in mainland Europe were envious of!

[dammy]

Unfortunately everyone thought there was more money to be made selling cheap PCs than to have your own R&D.

They were sort of correct, they should have gone x86 without a doubt. What they should have also realised is that there is a great deal of money also to be made with R&D in the x86 world.  I still think if C= had done the switch to Amiga x86 and put the new Amiga gfx on a PCI card, C= would be a major player in the computer market, regardless what OS was running on the x86 box as long as there were M$ drivers for the Amiga gfx card.  Best of both worlds IMO.

[Ral-Clan]

And what about Commodore Canada?  I always understood that they were doing fairly well at the end also?  In Canada, Commodore computers were hugely popular.  You'd have labs full of Commodore 64s and PETs in the 1980s in Canadian schools, whereas from talking with people in the US, they had Apple II labs there instead.

In my late high school days, when the C64 was old technology, I didn't see these schools switch to Amigas (there may have been one or two for the art room)....they switched to DOS and Windows 3.11 PCs, but they were all Commodore manufactured PCs (like the Colt, etc.).

Does anyone have more of the Canadian story?  It might have made sense for the UK division to have continued with the Canadian division as its North American distributor.

It would have been a nice full-circle story, too, as Commodore began in Canada with its founding in 1958 in Toronto.
http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/commodore___cbm.html

[Kronos]

The fact that Commodore UK had the business savvy to not only stay afloat, but be outright profitable in the face of otherwise total corporate collapse proves their competence to me.

Back in the days C= UK was dwarfed by C= Germany, and the only reason why UK stayed afloat longer was because they still had huge stocks. Just like Petro's division of selling NOS A1200 was far more profitable than anything else during Gateway and Amino-Amiga.

Those guys running C= Germany ended up at Escom btw.

C= UK knew how to make alot of fuss, but they failed getting the money together for a serious bit, and buying C= would have been the cheap part of any Amiga-revival. Remember how much time effort and money Escom spent just to get the A1200 back into production and even that would have been dwarfed by the cost of actually developing an AAAA,Hombre, whatever chipset.

Bunch of megalomaniacs.

Far more interesting is what would have been if Samsung had gone through with their bid ....

[persia]

The '90s were tough time for computer manufacturers.  Even clone makers fell.  Microsoft actually bailed out Apple at one point with a quick infusion of what Apple would call pocket change today.  Consumers were abandoning the non-clones.  The choice to keep Amiga the same translated into lower and lower sales.  PC graphics, originally non-existent, got better and better.  Interchangable parts are cheap.  

It's hard to see a winning strategy for Commodore in this.

[gertsy]

No they just do a half arsed job all the time. Just got to look at my Escom 1200 for a fine example. :lol:

Hey, I love my little Escom A1200. Goes forever.  knock on wood. It'll be bastille day soon to n'all... Svp ne salissez pas avec mon Amiga

"Shh baby, don't you listen to the bad man......."

@persia.  Tend to agree.. A revolution was needed in '92-'93.  Not an evolution.

[HammerD]

And what about Commodore Canada?  I always understood that they were doing fairly well at the end also?  In Canada, Commodore computers were hugely popular.  You'd have labs full of Commodore 64s and PETs in the 1980s in Canadian schools, whereas from talking with people in the US, they had Apple II labs there instead.

In my late high school days, when the C64 was old technology, I didn't see these schools switch to Amigas (there may have been one or two for the art room)....they switched to DOS and Windows 3.11 PCs, but they were all Commodore manufactured PCs (like the Colt, etc.).

Does anyone have more of the Canadian story?  It might have made sense for the UK division to have continued with the Canadian division as its North American distributor.

It would have been a nice full-circle story, too, as Commodore began in Canada with its founding in 1958 in Toronto.
http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/commodore___cbm.html

I have a pamphlet somewhere on C= Canada, I will try to find it.  Even my step-father's business had a C= PC - similar tower to A4000T.

As far as I recall C= Canada was profitable right up until the end, and was one of the last C= subsidiaries to actually close, if not the very last.   They had a warehouse and small sales office near Toronto with a small tech support department.

[jj]

probably last to close because last to hear about what was going on with commodore in rest of world

[mongo]

I have a pamphlet somewhere on C= Canada, I will try to find it.  Even my step-father's business had a C= PC - similar tower to A4000T.

As far as I recall C= Canada was profitable right up until the end, and was one of the last C= subsidiaries to actually close, if not the very last.   They had a warehouse and small sales office near Toronto with a small tech support department.

Yup. Commodore Canada was profitable to the end. Inventory dried up pretty quickly after Commodore International went bankrupt and they shut down their offices and warehouse when that happened. I still have a few items I bought at the warehouse sale they had before they closed it down. They opened a small storefront operation and ran a BBS to support their customers as best they could while waiting for a resolution to the bankruptcy proceedings. They licensed the Commodore name to a local PC manufacturer (IPC, I think it was) to bring in some income in the mean time.

When the dust settled, Escom told them that they weren't interested in doing business with them and by that time any existing Commodore warranty obligations had run out, so with no products to sell and nothing left to do, they closed up shop for good.

[runequester]

I dont think people care as much about processor power as computer geeks tend to think they do

The playstation was outmatched by PC's when it came out and sold like hotcakes

The wii sells like hotcakes today even though its graphics are years behind the competition.

Most PC's sold are very modest specs compared to what is considered a "hardcore" gaming PC.

[Matt_H]

Back in the days C= UK was dwarfed by C= Germany, and the only reason why UK stayed afloat longer was because they still had huge stocks. Just like Petro's division of selling NOS A1200 was far more profitable than anything else during Gateway and Amino-Amiga.

I guess the question is, then, how was it that C= UK managed to get such a large stockpile? Or was it a normal-sized stockpile, but seemed large relative to the shortages happening in North America, and presumably elsewhere, just prior to the bankruptcy? My utterly baseless theory is that since they actually had an understanding of marketing and retail distribution, they had enough money flowing in to keep their parts suppliers financially appeased and were able to have a more regular production schedule (at the Scotland factory, maybe?). And I thought they were able to do this because they had the most operational/financial autonomy from West Chester out of any of the international divisions. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Those guys running C= Germany ended up at Escom btw.

C= UK knew how to make alot of fuss, but they failed getting the money together for a serious bit, and buying C= would have been the cheap part of any Amiga-revival. Remember how much time effort and money Escom spent just to get the A1200 back into production and even that would have been dwarfed by the cost of actually developing an AAAA,Hombre, whatever chipset.

I think C= UK and Creative Equipment International (Commodore's US distributor) failed to realize with their bids that there would be external interest in what they believed to be an internal credit crisis. It seemed like they each had the money to pay off the creditors and stabilize the company, but didn't expect it to be acquired out from under them.

If I'm remembering correctly, Escom picked up a bunch of Commodore veterans as employees, but they didn't do much to leverage business expertise outside of Germany. I wonder if they had collaborated more with C= UK (or as someone else mentioned, C= Canada) they would have been able to get production going sooner/cheaper. That might be oversimplifying things, though, given the huge mess Mehdi Ali left behind.

Bunch of megalomaniacs.

No comment

Far more interesting is what would have been if Samsung had gone through with their bid ....

They were still a small player in the electronics market back then, were they not? I expect we would have seen something set-top-box-like, probably tied more to the chipset than the OS.

[ajlwalker]

I actually hold Commodore UK in very high regard, they were probably the best maketing division of the whole of Commodore. I wouldn't be surprised if Commodore in one form or another would still be around if that deal had gone through. The Cartoon Classics, Desktop Dynamite, Epic, Weild Weird an Wicked and Critical Zone packs were thing we in mainland Europe were envious of!

I think it was the Batman pack that really shifted the A500 units in the UK.

At one time Amiga Format was the biggest selling male interest magazine in the UK.  It was pushing 300,000 magazines a month.

Commodore UK did seem to get something right.  Whether that would have continued is another matter.

[ajlwalker]

Back in the days C= UK was dwarfed by C= Germany, and the only reason why UK stayed afloat longer was because they still had huge stocks. Just like Petro's division of selling NOS A1200 was far more profitable than anything else during Gateway and Amino-Amiga.

Those guys running C= Germany ended up at Escom btw.

C= UK knew how to make alot of fuss, but they failed getting the money together for a serious bit, and buying C= would have been the cheap part of any Amiga-revival. Remember how much time effort and money Escom spent just to get the A1200 back into production and even that would have been dwarfed by the cost of actually developing an AAAA,Hombre, whatever chipset.

Bunch of megalomaniacs.

Far more interesting is what would have been if Samsung had gone through with their bid ....

So far as I understand it a lot of the C= A1200 and A600 were 3rd party manufactured in Irvine, Scotland.

I'm sure it would have been pretty simple and relatively cheap for that factory to resume production.

[ajlwalker]

I guess the question is, then, how was it that C= UK managed to get such a large stockpile? Or was it a normal-sized stockpile, but seemed large relative to the shortages happening in North America, and presumably elsewhere, just prior to the bankruptcy? My utterly baseless theory is that since they actually had an understanding of marketing and retail distribution, they had enough money flowing in to keep their parts suppliers financially appeased and were able to have a more regular production schedule (at the Scotland factory, maybe?). And I thought they were able to do this because they had the most operational/financial autonomy from West Chester out of any of the international divisions. Correct me if I'm wrong.



I think C= UK and Creative Equipment International (Commodore's US distributor) failed to realize with their bids that there would be external interest in what they believed to be an internal credit crisis. It seemed like they each had the money to pay off the creditors and stabilize the company, but didn't expect it to be acquired out from under them.

If I'm remembering correctly, Escom picked up a bunch of Commodore veterans as employees, but they didn't do much to leverage business expertise outside of Germany. I wonder if they had collaborated more with C= UK (or as someone else mentioned, C= Canada) they would have been able to get production going sooner/cheaper. That might be oversimplifying things, though, given the huge mess Mehdi Ali left behind.


No comment



They were still a small player in the electronics market back then, were they not? I expect we would have seen something set-top-box-like, probably tied more to the chipset than the OS.

I believe Commodore UK were successful in obtaining residule stock from Commodore divisions around the world.  ie.  As they shut up shop the stock was forwarded/sold to Commodore UK.  I'm sure I read this in magazines during the time, but my memory could of course be playing tricks in me.

As for Samsung, I believe they were pretty massive even then, but mainly an East Asian presence.

[RMK305]

So far as I understand it a lot of the C= A1200 and A600 were 3rd party manufactured in Irvine, Scotland.

I never knew that they were made in Irvine.