Whither Heath tooling?

[Multi-Volti Devices]

Hello:

My take on this...

As far as the doors actually closing, Heath separated from the St Joe
facility some years ago  and moved back to a true Benton Harbor
location. The postal address had been BH for many years despite being in
St Joe for a long time.

Despite many layoffs and elimination of product lines, Heath continued
the educational division. There was a parceling out of Heath to a group
of Florida investors, and eventually ZDS (oh wait, I forgot about the
Groupe Bull purchase. They jerked the computer production lines around,
moving some stuff to Massachusetts, then sold the St Joe facility to
Packard Bell who closed it shortly thereafter. Excess inventory was
eliminated on a continuing basis anytime accounting (especially ZDS
acctg) felt like it. They had their reasons, but believe me it was mind
boggling to those in the trenches what logic they used for setting
prices of replacement parts, what parts were bought in what quantities
to meet minimum orders or pricing, and then scrapped at about 90% rate
based on projected usage. It was crazy to some of us.

Anyway, stuff moved out over at least 15 years to two local salvage
dealers, one of whom seemed to be easier to deal with (read that however
you want, if you live in the area :o) ] so they got first pick.

When they started bleeding the stockroom really badly, the salvage guy
got overwhelmed with parts inventory. He realized it was going to take
forever and a day to unload it, open 4 hours on Saturdays and no mail
order. (It was a hobby business). He sold out to a computer salvage
operation in Virginia who wanted to utilize the computer inventory.

Over a couple years, this entity patiently worked with local buyers to
try and find homes for the non-computer inventory. They must have had a
deadline from their HQ., because they seemed to 'snap' one day and clear
out everything but current computer stuff, lie there was a revenooer
raid coming down. The guy running the place told me he was shocked at
how quickly and indiscriminately they dumped things. By dumping, I mean
some dumpster, and mostly sale to a Texas material reclamation outfit.
He said it made him sick to see it happen, as I'm sure it did anyone who
had shopped there. It was like going to a flea market, with all Heath
and ZDS parts. Of course, most of the goodies got picked over long ago
by locals. Ham stuff was pretty rare.

I can appreciate they were trying to run a business and make money, and
sitting on all the weird hardware and obsolete cables, and utterly
disorganized (well, not totally, but not organized enough for very much
usefulness) parts could only go on so long.

Engineering fixtures, test equipment, etc. , and who knows what else
sold out of the Heath Surplus store, or privately by management to
commercial buyers. Some cool stuff went outta there. I bought what I
could afford (which wasn't much).

On a personal note, something snapped in MY brain, and I borrowed a
bunch of money to buy the power transformer inventory. Having always
been a transformer junkie, I thought I was doing the world, and Heath
collectors a favor by saving them from the landfills. No one is sure
whether it was temporary insanity or what, but enough about that.

Anyone else perhaps can fill in or correct my version, feel free please.

Murray

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