In 1984 Scitex neto sales was over 100,000,000$ a new sales mark 40% more than 1983 !!!
Most of the sales around 80% came from Vista and R300 product sales.
Against the prediction of Orwell for 1984 it was a good year for Scitex !!!
A lot of new employees started to work at Scitex on this year.
Israel is now one of the world’s tech powerhouses, second only to Silicon Valley as a hub for startups, but it wasn’t always this way.
Today, in honor of the 84th birthday of Professor Aviezri Fraenkel, Google has posted on its blog site a short film sharing his story of working on the WEIZAC, Israel’s first computer.
Click here to see the video
Click here to read more.
P.INK Germany enters Chapter 11
P.INK, the Macintosh-based editorial front-end system whose history has been mixed at best, has hit another stumbling block: bankruptcy.
The German company that developed the software — P.INK Software Engineering GmbH of Hamburg — has filed Vergleichsbeantragung, the German version of Chapter 11 reorganization. This type of bankruptcy filing allows a company to keep its creditors at bay while it negotiates for better repayment plans and/or the injection of working capital from new investors.
Reports from Germany indicate that P.INK had been planning on a fresh round of financing from Scitex Corp. Ltd. of Herzlia, Israel — one of its four owners — which was not forthcoming.
Speculation has implicated Scitex’s 1995 third-quarter loss of more than $36.4 million as the reason it didn’t make the investment. The loss might have left the company cash-strapped and incapable of honoring its commitment to buy out two of the other three owners of P.INK.
Scitex America executives did not respond to numerous phone and e-mail queries regarding the P.INK situation.
Scitex, which markets the P.INK product line outside of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, bought 25 percent of the company in February 1994 with an agreement to acquire another 50 percent of the company over a two-year period. The remaining 25 percent of P.INK would remain with its founder, president and chief executive, Andreas Poliza.
The 50 percent of the company that Scitex was scheduled to acquire has been owned by the German newspaper publishing group Madsack and a German software company called Rechenzentrum Südwest. Rechenzentrum has owned its 25 percent for only a year.
The acquisition of P.INK was engineered by Scitex America Corp. executive Bob Holt, a former editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Holt, based in Bedford, Mass., spent much of 1993 in Hamburg, stopping off on his way to and from Israel to work with Poliza to improve the software and iron out the long-term relationship.
Scitex — both in Israel and the United States — has gone through massive reorganizations recently. The head of Scitex America, George Carlisle, left the company last summer. In November, Arie Rosenfeld, the president and chief executive of Scitex Corp. Ltd. resigned amidst the fallout from the company’s sizable third-quarter loss.
Part of the reason for that loss was an $18 million charge for employee termination benefits; many longtime Scitex executives have recently left the company, including Scitex America’s marketing executive Ken Hurtabise and corporate communications executive Paul Thiele.
In addition, Scitex America announced in August the establishment of a publishing division that would be responsible for the P.INK product line as well as other Scitex products.
Scitex has sold the Mac-based P.INK system to two newspapers — The Sun of Bremerton, Wash., a 41,000-circulation evening daily, and the 63,000-circulation morning Evansville (Ind.) Courier. Both papers are owned by Scripps-Howard.
In addition, Scitex smoothed the installation of P.INK at the Toronto Sun and other Sun Publishing Corp. properties (which include the Calgary Sun, Edmonton Sun and Financial Post), even though the Sun papers had purchased the product directly from P.INK in Germany.
Executives at these papers were reluctant to be quoted about the situation, but indicated that Scitex had told them, as one said, “not to worry.”
“We’ve been told that the worst-case scenario is that Scitex will get the North American rights to the P.INK code,” said one newspaper executive.
Despite generally upbeat comments coming from customers, and published reports that the staff has “expressed full support for the company,” sources in Germany indicate that P.INK programmers are extensively circulating their resumes.
The P.INK story in North America is not a happy one: Demonstrated under the P.INK Software banner at ANPA/Tec 1990, the North American marketing rights for the product were acquired in 1991 by the Time Magazine Group division of media giant Time Warner.
For the next two years, P.INK America attempted to sell its software to its sibling divisions — magazines such as Time, People and long-time Mac user Entertainment Weekly — and newspapers and other magazines as well.
The potential customers, inside Time or not, were decidedly uninterested. In 1993, Time shut down P.INK America. It was another year before Scitex made its deal, and despite the Scripps-Howard sales the company has had problems building momentum for the product line.
From THE COLE PAPERS, January 1996, Copyright
I was checking the update on the site and enjoyed all the news. Thank you for posting my family pictures. The men and women of Scitex that I worked with were the people that made the biggest impact on my professional life. Despise the fact that I had no formal education and had left school after the 10th grade to help support my parents I was given the many breaks by the leaders of Scitex America Europe and Israel to excel and perform that which many born with a silver spoon could not. There is not one person that I can think of within Scitex family that did not help, teach, support and push me through the amazing achievements Scitex achieved. I will always be proud of these people and have learned to do the same thing to others by giving them the chance to. Excel and achieve good things in life.
As an Armenian I have always identified with the struggles of our people and have be proud to have been associated with the Israeli friend during my journey of life. I am glad and feel wonderful that I made those 50+ trips to Israel. I am glad I took my wife and children to Israel more then five times to let them learn and see for themselves about the people of the Scitex company that gave me their father the chance to make something of himself. I am forever indexed to all those that I was in contact with, worked with and shared bread with during my 22 years of being with Scitex of which 15 was working for Scitex.
You see when one hits 67 they start to get sentimental.
Etan Rozin thank you for the wonderful job you are doing keeping us all alive. You are a Rae specimen. I could only wish to be like you.
Fond regards
Varouj
During Joel’s career, he has become an expert in management of Production and QA in the fields of electronics, medical devices and digital printers. His expertise includes coordinating a variety of subcontractors in Israel and abroad.
Over the last two years in China, as Deputy General Manager and the only Westerner in an electronics manufacturing concern, Joel learned to work successfully with Chinese top management and subordinates.
From 2009 to 2010 Joel worked at Nanjing Zijin-Lead Electronics Co. Ltd. is the manufacturing and the Far East distribution partner of Solido3D in Israel, which develops, manufactures and markets 3D printers worldwide.
He relocated to Nanjing, China, to supervise the establishment and monitoring of good manufacturing and good quality practices in this joint-venture for the manufacturing of 3D printers.
Joel spent 19 years at Scitex holding a variety of positions- Service engineer in Charlotte and Milan and quality assurance manager in Herzlia. Among the positions he has held after Scitex were quality assurance role at Nur, Solid Dimensions and Solido3D.
The Exscite David Solomon (Scitex/Israel Director of Economic Department ’85-’90) owns Solomon Capital Investment Banking (http://www.solomon-capital.com/#!firm/c1n8o ).
David is an accomplished author and one of Israel’s leading experts in the field of High-Tech/Biotech business Planning and Firm Valuation. He has successfully worked with dozens of emerging companies and is accredited with over a hundred winning business plans.
David has worked with high profile clients in the global market such as IBM, Scitex, Bezeq, Bank Discount, Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, Israel Aircraft Industries [IAI], QUALCOMM, Dor Energy.
He has formerly been the Director of Scitex’s Economic Department, The founder and the CEO of 4HIGHTECH [Investment Bank], and Micromedic technologies [Listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange]. Mr. Solomon lectures in Courses in academic and other institutes.
David is the author of various books including: “From Seed to IPO”, “Business Planning in the Post Bubble Era”, ”Biomedical – from Research to Market, The Business Challenge”. See here his recent newspaper article (in Hebrew)- “ How to get access to European equity capital during crisis time”
The good ol’ days of Scitex America in Bedford MA.
