Why did Heath die ?

[Bob N5NJ]

I am not sure that the surface mount technology is
a significant part of this discussion as I believe that
it actually happened after Heath was already on a
downhill slope.

Now, my opinion of what happened.  As Barry says, Zenith
was interested in the computer business not the other
stuff.  They let the kit business die on the vine and
focused on the Zenith line of PC's which were, while
well made, over priced.  They also focused later on the
Mac and other commercially made stuff.  The margins on
this stuff is so low because of the big discount stores
that is just was not something they could be competitive
in.  They raised service charges way out of line so that
it cost too much to have equipment repaired.

My guess is that some of the Zenith exec's were probably
thinking too much of themselves and probably bled the
company dry also.

I think they lost sight of where the majority of their
income came from and they chose the wrong way to ride
the wave of the PC boom.

The last kit that I built was a HV2000 "Heath Voice"
which is based on the speech stuff from the robot that
sythesizes speech from your PC on a ISA card.  It is
such a cool device and works very well even today.  This
is the sort of thing they should have been doing.

They lost sight of the roots of the company and what
made it successful.  They should have focused on unique
items as Heath was known for.

I worked for Heath in the late 70's and it was a great
place to work.  Joe Schulte was the manager of the Fair
Lawn, NJ store where I worked and he later went on to be
president of the Heath division( I think).

Rob's comments about how wonderful it was to open the box
and get started is correct.  All those unique items, the
tools - nut-starters, the alignment tool made out of a
nut-starter with a piece of steel in one end, the diddle
sticks, the magnifying glasses (that are not rare  - as
listed recently on you-know-where) and so on.  It was a
wonderful time, and building kits is a great thing to
have as a hobby.  In my case, it led to a career and I
think it could today if the enthusiasm I've seen from my
kids is any indication.

73,
Bob N5NJ
--
N5NJ / V26O
Plano, TX USA
ex KR2J, V26RN, W6V, WA2OVE

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