Heathkit Resurrection

[Brian Wood]

As many of you know, I've spent an inordinate amount of time looking into
this, and even have a complete business plan written now for the
resurrection of Heathkit. I haven't presented it to The Heathkit Company
yet, nor to the investment group that owns Heathkit, for a variety of
reasons.  I am only reluctantly mentioning it here for fear of starting a
"don't mess with the legacy" thread, but hey. You guys deserve to know. And
please don't ask me for a copy. I can't risk having my plan pirated. It
represents a lot of work.

I will say this: I agree with Bjorn Heyning, Heathkit engineer originally
hired in 1943, who said in 1986, "I personally feel that any product with
significant assembly labor content may have potential for a good kit
product – especially if the market is small enough to make automated
assembly unlikely. Frankly, I’m looking forward to the next implementation
of the Heathkit idea. May history repeat itself!" (credit: Terry Perdue's
"Heath Nostalgia").

And I'll add that today, markets that can support kits are shortwave radio
(including military and ham; radios, accessories and antennas), tube audio
(believe it or not), radio control, and ready-to-assemble furniture. The
total market size of those industries today is over 3 billion dollars.

The kit business has always been dependent on two things: price and desire.
Many electronic things that we used to build to save money can't be made as
kits today competitively (stereo, TV to name 2). And as others pointed out,
there's a smaller amount of time left in our lives to build them. However,
there used to be and still is an undercurrent of aficionados, like most of
us on this list I think, who loved building kits just because of the fun of
it, and would build a kit even if a comparable rig was on the market for a
similar price. The question is whether there are enough of us in the world
for a company to be profitable. And that's one of the keys: the world. The
Russians still build a lot of their own stuff and the Chinese are coming on
strong. Those are two huge untapped markets that were not available before
1989 and could help overcome the lack of interest in kitbuilding in the U.S.
It's a global economy. Might as well tap into it.

Yes, the old days are over. Thank God. But the new ones are still ahead.

73,

Brian Wood, W0DZ

-----Original Message-----
From: Heathkit Owners and Collectors List
[mailto:HEATH at LISTSERV.TEMPE.GOV]On Behalf Of Neil Morrison
Sent: Friday, November 02, 2001 12:24 PM
To: HEATH at LISTSERV.TEMPE.GOV
Subject: Re: Heathkit Resurrection


----- Original Message -----

> It would be
> very difficult and impractical to assemble a surface
> mount kit.

There have been articles in magazines like Radio-Electronics about doing
this.

>  However, if the product was unique enough
> (like a VFD Caller ID box) I would be pullin out my
> magnifying glass and needle soldering iron!

How about an 'Altair-like' computer?
How about an analog computer (solid state - not tube of course)?
Any other ideas?

>
> It all adds up to "Those days are over"

Maybe?

Regards,

Neil

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