The Fall of Commodore

Once one of the top personal computer companies in North America, the company Commodore had a major fall. What happened?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Business on the Brink, a production from I
Heart Radio and How Stuff Works. Commodore had the most
popular computer of all time, yes, even against Apple and Microsoft,
and later would upgrade to merge with another computer system,
making them a double powerhouse. But the same strategy that

(00:26):
made the brand sell so well was the same glitch
in the system that would eventually lead to its crash.
It's a calculated story full of crazy drama that sometimes
might make you go, does not compute. So join us
as we take a bite that's b y t e
into the story of Commodore as a business on the brink. Hey,

(00:56):
everybody on Jonathan's trick Wine and I'm arial casting and
this is a sea guestion by a listener, Crystal vander Least.
Thank you, Crystal, Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it because
it's right in my wheelhouse. Well, it may not be
in my wheelhouse, but I owned both Commodore's and Amigos,
which is the other commuter we're gonna be talking about. Yeah,
you're ahead of me. I never had an Amiga. I

(01:17):
never had a Commodore either. I had a Texas Instrument
trash e D. But I never had a Commodore. I'm sorry.
The Commodore sixty four for it today was a really
good computer. Yeah, we're gonna talk a lot about that
because obviously it's a big important part of this story,
and one of the things we really wanted to focus
on was the way this company actually had its fall

(01:41):
from grace, which means we're gonna go real light on
the history part so that we can get to the
juicy bits. But it is important to know where the
company came from in order for us to understand what happened. Yeah, So,
to begin with, Commodore International was founded by Jack Trammel
in Eno as Commodore Business Machines Incorporated. He was an immigrant.

(02:02):
He had actually survived Auschwitz and then after trying a
few jobs in New York, whence he moved to New York,
he moved to Canada and started manufacturing typewriters. Yeah, he
actually got some money from a g I bill in
order to fund that. And some other things we should
know about Trammel that will become very important throughout this
episode is that he was I wrote the line fiercely competitive,

(02:27):
but I don't feel that truly captures the spirit. Do
you think it's too mild description. I mean, he he
literally was one of the entrepreneurs who said business is war.
That's like a direct quote from Trammel. He said that
when you go to business, you're not You're not just
there to make money. You are there to declare war

(02:47):
against all your competitors, and your goal has to be
to win. I mean, a little bit of that attitude
can maybe be healthy, but not entirely. You're you're missing
out on key components of what made people like Pany. Yeah,
and there's going to be some discussion about his leadership style,
which obviously rubbed some people the wrong way. But at

(03:08):
the same time he was considered truly a visionary in
that he really believed strongly in innovation and trying to
take the lead in the industry. So it's kind of
a double edged sword. Trammel. Yeah, but we're not there
yet because as markets changed and the typewriter business got

(03:29):
too competitive and two fears and not that he was
scared from it, but he moved from typewriters to adding machines. Yeah.
So what was going on was that the Japanese markets
were starting to create typewriters. This was right around the
time where Japan was starting to evolve into a technology
and manufacturing powerhouse. So this is you know, the immediate

(03:50):
post World War two was about Japan kind of re
establishing itself and then it sort of went full on
into this manufacturing phase. And the problem was they were
able to make the same stuff that Commodore was making,
but make it less expensive, so it was very hard
to compete. And by that we mean typewriters, not computers. Yes,

(04:12):
so we're not there yet. After adding machines, he moved
to calculators and during that time he incorporated which was
in and he went public on the New York Stock
Exchange in nineteen sixty two under the name Commodore International Limited. Yes,
and shortly after that the company wasn't a bit of
a rough patch. It was finding itself short of cash.

(04:32):
And so one thing that Commodore ended up doing was
selling a significant number of shares to a Canadian businessman
named Irving Gould, and Gould would actually do that again.
He would ultimately invest about three and a half million
dollars into the company and then as a result he
became a major shareholder in Commodore and decision maker. Yes,

(04:54):
he would actually end up becoming the chairman of the board. Yes,
but before then, when Commodore was working in calculators, they
were actually known for being a calculator manufacturer. They lost
their supplier for the chips that go in the calculator
and uh, Texas Instruments, and they actually Texas Instruments actually
decided to sell calculators directly. Right, So now Texas instrument

(05:17):
is making the competing product and it's taken away the
source of chips that were powering the Commodore calculators. Yeah,
so Commodore found other resources for chips and eventually bought
MS Technology, which was a chip manufacturer, and assimilated their
chip designer, Chuck Pedal. And this is important because it's
Chuck who convinced Trammel and Commodore to start looking towards

(05:39):
computers instead of calculators, and specifically home computers, because at
this point in time, computers are mainly for business. Yeah.
In fact, up to the mid nineteen seventies, you were
not likely to find a computer unless you were either
in like a scientific or research laboratory, or if you
were working in a really big business something like a
bank or you know, some other fine ancial institution something

(06:01):
that had to crunch a lot of numbers, because up
to that point computers were pretty big. They were like
the size of a desk, and we're just getting to
the phase where computers could be miniaturized enough to be
a desktop computer. And even then you had hobbyists who
were interested in building their own computers, and you had
computer kits that were coming out, but there weren't very

(06:25):
many PCs that were being built and sold as a
full product. Right, this is the very dawn of that age.
So this is where we see pet Old say to Trammel, like,
this is a market that's going to explode, and we
can get in on the ground floor, and they did so.
In nine Commodore International Limiteds moved their headquarters to Pennsylvania,

(06:49):
and then a year later they came out with our
first computer, which was the Commodore PET Personal Electronic Transactor,
the PET, the PET, and by the turn of the
decade it was one of the top three computer companies.
Commodore was at least among micro computers or home computers.
Yeah yeah, yeah, Because I mean again, this was like
the early days. You did see a lot of companies

(07:10):
attempt to get into this market. The ones we tend
to remember really from this era would be Apple because
the IBM PC would come a little bit later, and
kind of radio Shock, Yeah, and Texas instruments to a
to an extent. If you if you were around back then,
you might remember them. But if you were, say, born
after I don't know, five, then maybe you don't remember

(07:33):
these other computers. Um. So let's let's talk about what
was going on with this. Because they launched the PET.
The PET was not a runaway success for Commodore. No, no, Um,
they were. They were one of the top three computer companies,
but they didn't have a good marketing plan or good

(07:54):
tech support. And you know, computer home computers are a
new thing that are going to be bugs. Yeah, and
if another company is known for being more responsive, uh
and providing better support than they're going to start looking favorable. Yeah.
So a year and a half later, Commodore dropped in
the ranks of computers pretty hard. Um. They did course

(08:16):
correct and we got the VIC twenty Yes, which was
incredibly successful. Yeah, one of the first personal computers to
hit one million units sold. Yeah, they they hold the
record for that, Like Commodore hit that benchmark before any
the Apple too did not sell a million units before
the and then we got, more importantly to me, the
Commodore sixty four. That was my first computer that I remember. Um.

(08:38):
I came out in eighty two when I was born.
That written knows my age now, but you know, I
remember owning it. I remember playing Sticky Bear and Space
Taxi and Kuala Pad and whole position. And I'm going
to stop now. Um. Yeah. And one of the things
that really set the Commodore sixty for apart was that

(08:58):
not just that it was a very good personal computer,
at least according to Arial's memory. I never got to
use one, so I'm just basing this upon her ardent
support in the notes, and yeah, I put down hashtag
bias not bias. Yes, the fact that you drew little

(09:18):
hearts and puppy dogs people. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Anyway,
they were both the VIC twenty and the the Commodore
sixty four. We're both priced incredibly competitively. So the VIC
twenty came out, it was priced or initially at three
hundred dollars, actually less than three hundred dollars. That's Incredible's
like then you had the Commodore sixty four. It started

(09:41):
at five dollars, and then they got into kind of
a price war with the other computers that were on
the market. So before long the Commodore sixty four is
price dropped and dropped and dropped until it hit about
one dollars for new Commodore sixty which is ridiculous for computer. Yeah,
it also probably meant that they were barely making any profit,

(10:06):
if any at all, because the profit margins are pretty
thin when you get down to that level. But this
was Trammel's philosophy of business is war, and it meant that, yeah,
we might not be making as much per sale, but
we are totally the sales. Yeah, we're getting the sales.
We're given the screw to all those other companies out there,

(10:27):
take that apple. Yeah, they did beat out the t
S from Radio, checking price, the t I from Texas Instruments,
and Atari, who was one of their fiercest competitors, and
weren't going to get into that. And just a little
bit Yeah that this story gets so juicy, It gets
so so fun is the wrong word. It's interesting? Interesting, Yes, fascinating.
So Trammel, like I said, was said to be difficult

(10:50):
to work for. There were stories about him firing entire
management teams if things weren't going well, if you felt
that they weren't weren't doing their job. And he was
also known to really kind of leverage different suppliers against
each other and try to make them dependent upon Commodore
so that they wouldn't work with anybody else. He was
also litigious. He would bring lawsuits against other companies, sometimes

(11:14):
not even with the intent of winning a lawsuit, but
rather just to slow down his his his competition so
that they couldn't beat him to market um. He was
also known to occasionally pull a fast one on retailers.
One of the stories I read was that he signed

(11:34):
a deal with Kmart to sell the VIC twenty at
a price that was actually lower than the wholesale price
he was offering to a computer retailer called computer Land. So,
in other words, computer Land was having to spend more
to purchase a computer from Commodore sixty four in order
to sell it off at a markup than Kmart was
even selling the Commodore sixty four in the first place.

(11:57):
And so of course you can't keep that up for
very along the computer Land said CIA. It seems like
he was shooting himself in the foot, not building goodwill
with the people who would sell his product, especially as
you're getting all of these competitors. That being said, they
did sell one billion dollars worth of computers by and

(12:18):
the Commodo sixty four, as we said in the intro,
is the most popular computer system ever sold. Yeah, so
you might think, well, how the heck could accompany that's
dominating the personal computer industry, one that has has got
all of the firsts, like the first to hit a
million units, sold a billion dollars in sales. How could

(12:38):
this company end up faltering? How isn't it too big
to fail? I mean no, but we'll talk about that
right after this break. Al Right, So, like you said,
Commodore was selling really well, out selling all of the competitors,

(12:59):
but all of the price cutting that Trammel is doing.
The suits were not happy with it, Yeah, because it
meant that you had very low profits. I mean, yes,
you had incredible revenue, but very low profits because that
margin was so razor thin. And Irving Gould particularly objected
to this. He had been the guy who had, at

(13:21):
least in his own eyes, rescued Commodore from certain disaster.
By investing so much money. And so there was this
fundamental disagreement between Trammel, who was saying, let's take no
prisoners in march into war and defeat our enemies, and Gould,
who was saying, let's not, you know, end up making

(13:43):
being number one at the expense of profit. And eventually
you get to this fundamental disagreement where Gould felt that
Trammel had led the company to a billion dollars in
sales but would not be able to grow it. They're
up to ten billion in sales, in other words, not
if he kept cutting prices, yeah, it wasn't Or or
if you did ten billion in sales, it wouldn't matter

(14:04):
because you were selling it for less than what it
costs to make it and you're just losing money anyway.
It's reckless thinking. Yeah. So there have been a lot
of arguments on both sides about the fact that one
side is wrong or the other side's wrong. A lot
of people have said both sides were kind of wrong
and that there were there were legitimate points on either
point of view, but they were also legitimate shortcomings on

(14:28):
both sides. The bottom line here is that you have
these spoort of directors who have decided that Trammel can't
stay in charge, he's got to go. And of course
he was the founder of the company, and so there's
a story about the board meaning making their decision and

(14:48):
giving Trammel the boot, and the way the story goes
is that it happened pretty darn publicly. So there are
other rumors about how Trammel was bringing his sons on.
That wasn't a rumor that actually did happen. He had
three sons and they had joined the company. But whether
he was doing it to gain more political footing over Gold,

(15:10):
that's that's another question. Yeah, whether or not that was
an actual concern or if that was just a perception
on the part of Gould. But by the end of
nineteen eighty three or the beginning of nineteen eighty four,
right around there is when the board of directors decided
that Trammel had to go. He had to he had
to be forced out of the role of CEO of

(15:31):
the company. And uh, there's a whole story about him
being at c e S nineteen eighty four, which happens
in January every year, and that while he was there,
he gave a presentation and you know, he had all
these great things to say about Commodore in the sense
that they had a billion dollars in sales, that's a
huge thing, but that he was visibly unhappy while giving

(15:53):
the presentation, And so the story goes that he had
already he knew he was on his way out, but
then had to still go forward and give this presentation
in front of the public, and then essentially a week later,
the actual announcement of his departure became public news. Yeah,
Commodore hired a steel guy named Marshall F. Smith to
run the company, and Trammel took his ball if ball

(16:14):
equals a bunch of engineers and started another company, Trammel Technologies,
and then he bought Atari's consumer division, creating Atari Corp. Uh,
the parent company of Atari. Warner Communications only wanted the
video game side of Atari, which is what most people
are familiar with. Right. We will have to do a
full episode on Atari at some point. That's a very

(16:35):
complicated story because, as you see right here, the company
of Atari had been split into two. You had the
video game side of it that remained with Warner, and
then you had the personal computer side, which went to
Trammel uh. And it's also interesting that we see how Trammel,
who had built Commodore up, was now determined to take

(16:57):
it down because of this betrayal. He was ready to
go to war against the very company that he had founded. Well,
Commodore it was kind of on the same track because
they bought a small computer company named Amiga million dollars
and this gets so juice. Yes, all right, so Amiga

(17:18):
had been trying to launch a personal computer, uh for
a bit. It had multiple failed attempts over the few
years leading up to their acquisition, mainly from the revenue
side of thinks, some from the development side, but a
lot of it was revenue based, and we're about to
get into that. And the merge companies became Commodore Amiga.
But the problem is is that Amiga an Atari, before

(17:41):
being bought by Arrivals, were working together. Yeah, so you
had Amiga and Atari working on a project because the
initial idea was to build a personal computer. But then
the guy who really was the driving force behind the
Amiga found a lot of resistance to the idea of

(18:01):
building a personal computer, but there was a lot of
reception to build a video game system. So then he
switches gears, and he's he's still really building a personal computer,
but building a personal computer that's being marketed as a
video game. But he's getting a lot of pushback for
all of the personal computer type things he wants to
add to it. Yes, and then you had the infamous

(18:22):
video game crash of nineteen eighty three Slash four, And
now suddenly the there's no market to sell video game
consoles anymore in North America. So now Atari is totally
flipping out and like, oh no, no, no, we should
turn this into a personal computer, which was what the
plan was from the first place. Yes, but now their
revenue was gone, and you had this complicated rivalry that

(18:48):
was really messing things up because you had this agreement
between Atari and Amiga. Then Atari gets taken over by
a former Commodore UH founder and leader, and then Amiga
gets taken over by Commodore, so it became a very
um let's say, awkward business relationship. Well, Commodore tried to

(19:11):
sue some of the engineers that left for Atari Corps
from Commodore to keep them from releasing Amiga's ideas once
they were working together. Tram Trammel counter suit because of
Atari's contract with Amiga, there was a a loan that
if it wasn't paid back, Atari would get Amiga's I

(19:32):
p Yeah, So that was all coming to a head,
right like, it looks like Amiga was not going to
be able to pay back this loan. It looked like
Amiga was going to completely get wrapped up into Atari.
And then in swoops Commodore the essentially said hey, we'll
pay that loan off for you. Trammel, who has to

(19:53):
accept the payment for the loan, suddenly sees this prize
that was going to be his swept away by the
company that had spurned him. I told you against Juicy.
Yeah yeah. But all this time, while these two companies
are fighting it out, Apple, IBM and Microsoft start grabbing
the market. Yes, so you have these two giants that

(20:16):
are in a battle over Amiga, and meanwhile there's not
a whole lot of progress being made on the product
side of Amiga because all this all this corporate stuff
has to get worked out, and so that gave plenty
of opportunities for the other companies. This is the same
time when Apple released its first Macintosh computer, the IBM
personal computer was hitting the market. So now IBM was

(20:39):
actually entering into the home market. Microsoft was playing every
side against every other side and getting it software on
anything and everything that was remotely a computer. And so
this was this was a bad time for Amiga because
that that design had a lot of merit. Yes, yes,

(21:00):
did I owned it an Amiga two thousand, which is
later on they were working on the Amiga one thousand
at this point. But yeah, it was a computer way
ahead of its time. And so not only were they
suing each other to try to keep their competing products
from going out before the other one, which you said
Trammell did it was known for doing. Uh. Commodore at
the same time, to try to get some money back

(21:22):
from spending all of the money they did to buy Amiga,
was releasing weird models of computers they were kind of
competing with themselves, like the C sixteen. Yeah, they started
releasing a bunch of Commodore branded computers that were very
confusing to the market because even Commodore was not really

(21:42):
good at explaining what the differences were between the different
systems apart from their different price tags, and uh, some
of them were kind of underpowered compared to a lot
of the other stuff on the market, and because it
seemed rather directionless, or at least in part because as
it was rather directionless, there wasn't a lot of adoption,

(22:03):
so there weren't a lot of people going on buying
these systems. If you want to look into this stuff,
we're not going to go into it because it gets
really technical. But the Computer History Museum online has a
ton of stuff about the different Commodore computers that came out,
and you'll see that there was a lot of there's
a lot of stuff out there that could confuse the
average consumer who just wants to have a working personal computer.

(22:25):
Yeah yeah, Um. By the time the Amigo one thousand
was ready to hit the market, they didn't have the resources.
During that time the st which was the Atari Computer
came out, UM and Commodore Amigo once they finally did
get the Amigo one thousand out, didn't really do a
good job at marketing, and they were also late to

(22:46):
the market, so they kind of missed the opening window
for the holiday season that year. And then they decided
not to put themselves on the same in the same
stores like Sears. I think it was as as the
Atari Computer it or and then they also had bugs. Yeah,
the Amiga one thousand was known for having some shortcomings

(23:07):
as far as that's concerned, Like where it shown, it
outperformed all the other personal computers of that era. Yeah,
and that was largely in the graphics and sound departments.
Like I mean, not a big surprise. The Amiga had
for a while been laser focused into being a video
game machine, and now it no longer was quote unquote

(23:30):
just a video game machine. But the things that a
video game machine needs to do well, largely graphics and sound,
the Amiga did better than any other personal computer. And
I think that's a pretty solid statement you could make.
I remember when I first saw an Amiga in action.
I was because it was at the time when it

(23:50):
was first was brand new, because that's how old I am.
I remember being totally blown away because it's so left
everything else I'd ever played or worked on behind. As
far as that the graphics and sound working man, I
loved it, uh, And they had one thing, so despite
the marketing issues and the sales issues, they were easier

(24:13):
to work with. A lot of people didn't want to
work with Trammels, so he didn't get as much good
software for his computer, and he had to price it
lower than the Amiga because he didn't have as many
cool bills and whistles, and the Amiga did outlast the
st Yeah, so this was a case where Trammel's personality

(24:33):
would end up being a drawback. You know, it's he
he was very good at going up against competitors, but
he alienated a lot of people along the way. So
in this in this sense, Commodore was in a better position,
but it seemed like it was a company that didn't

(24:55):
know what to do with its star product, and that
story is only going to get worse. But before we
get into that, let's take another quick break. Okay, so
we're in the Amiga era. It's nineteen eighty five. What

(25:15):
happens next? Al Right? So in five, Mr Smith, who
is the CEO of Commodore, also an agent who was
going after Neo. Yes, he was really trying to make
Commodore Amiga profitable again, so he kept payroll by nearly half. Wow,
they had had losses of two dred and thirty seven

(25:37):
million dollars that same year, so he was really just
trying to pay off some of their debt and stay afloat.
It seems like and then the next year they opted
not to do the big electronic shows like c S
that they usually showcased at again to save money and
focus on development. But that the problem with is it
creates a public perception that your company is not doing it. Yeah. Yeah,

(25:57):
So then we got a management change. Oh yeah, don't
just by the way, would become a common theme. Yes, Yes,
so Smith stepped down and we got Thomas Radigan who
took his place under a five year contracts. So it's
important to note it was a five year contract. Yes.
Radigan did three more rounds of layoffs and cut a

(26:19):
bunch of old and underperforming product lines, right, some of
those confusing Commodore machines we talked about in the last segment. Yes,
and then he relocated the Amiga team, at least those
who agreed to go from California to Pennsylvania. Yeah. The
guy who was the the sort of the father of
the Amiga J minor was not one of those people. Know,

(26:40):
and these thing has worked. The company was profitable again.
By the end of put people were not so happy. Yeah. Now,
Ratigan really wanted to to kind of put some of
Commodore's marketing power behind the Amiga. He really believed in
that being a possible way to stand out among the
field of personal computers that were starting to proliferate in

(27:03):
the mid eighties. Um And he also kind of oversaw
the the creation of two different lines of Amiga computers.
So you had sort of the low end and in
the upper end, which is not that unusual. We see
that all the time today in personal computers right now.
Back in the early early days, like the Apple Too.

(27:23):
When the Apple two came out, it was just the
Apple Too. You would eventually get things like the Apple
to E and the Apple two G and things like that,
but early on, if you went out to get a
computer you got there was just one of each brand.
This was sort of the birth of, or at least
an early example of having the low end and the
high end of the same computer family. Yes, and the

(27:45):
high end was the Amega, the one that you owned,
the one that I owned that I love so much,
so much, uh, and then the one for casual use,
the lower end one, the Amiga five. Now, they made
a very odd decision when they were building these Amiga
is right, they did. Rodigan decided not to put the
Amiga developer team on either project. So they had non

(28:08):
Amiga team people building the next generation of a Mega machines.
Meanwhile the Amiga team people are working on other projects. Yeah, well,
or just sitting around being upset that they're on the
design team for the either way. Either way, they were upset.
On top of that, both of these computers their development
experienced delays and so they still were not coming out.

(28:30):
They weren't meeting their goals for release, and Irving gold
Yep saying hey, I had expectations they are not being met.
So what is his solution to this problem? Well, he
hires a consultant to look at the company and suggest changes. Yeah.
I used to work for consultants. I knew exactly what
they do. So what did they do? They say, Hey,

(28:52):
you need to fire the dude who's in charge. Yes,
that's what consultants do. We call them the bobs. It's
an office space reference. Yeah. So here's the problem. You
remember what we mentioned about Ratigan and just a couple
of minutes ago. Yeah, he had a five year contract. Yeah,
we're not five years into that. So getting rid of
somebody who has a contract that says he's going to

(29:16):
hold this position for a minimum of five years. You
get into some sticky situations, specifically lawsuits and countersuits for
breach of contract and in one nine million dollars and
unpaid wages. And then gold took over Commodore Amiga for
a while. Yeah, he became the interim CEO, so he's

(29:39):
chairman and interim CEO. Uh, the five hundred and the
two thousand Amiga's would come out in which you know,
they came out. They were great computers. But part of
the problem was that all those delays meant that it
was harder for Commodore to capitalize on their launch because
while they were being developed, other computers were still advancing

(30:01):
and evolving. I still would argue that no one was
coming close to the graphics and sound. I would agree,
but you also have to figure since this is such
a new area for consumers, they don't understand why they
might need new, better graphics and sound in a personal
computer as opposed to a gaming console. And it also
didn't help that they couldn't run the same software as

(30:23):
other computers. And so these other computers that have been
on the market for a while and it really established themselves.
You had software developers who were dedicating themselves to making
stuff either for the PC or for the Apple the
Macintosh line. It's very hard for a developer to devote
assets to making different versions of the same program for
every single computer platform. So Amiga did not have the

(30:46):
software support. Had a lot of video game support, but
not a lot of software support. Uh. Then we get
a new CEO in uh Mehdi Ali, who was someone
who had worked for Commodore for just three years. You've
only been there since nineteen six before Gould tapped him
to be the new CEO, and um he is to

(31:09):
call him a controversial figure at Commodore is putting it mildly. Uh.
There were employees who outright hated Ali so much so
that there is a documentary shot. I'm not even documentary,
it was it was like home movies shot by a
former chief engineer over at Commodore, where in part of

(31:30):
the video they burn Ali in effigy, and that the
things things did not go well as you imagine. There
were a lot of complaints that Ali was a very
highly compensated CEO, something like two million dollars a year,
which was just you know, a much much larger salary

(31:51):
than what the engineers were making and meanwhile, he didn't
seem to have a vision that would lead Commodore to success.
So people said that it was a terrible case of
mismanagement and that the executive team was more interested in
pocketing profits than using the money to reinvest in the company.

(32:14):
In fact, one of the things Ali did that drew
a lot of criticism from employees was he slashed the
budget for research and development, So it's this is a
computer company. Taking away their R and D meant that
they could no longer be leaders and innovation well, and
it killed them. By only UK and Germany were had

(32:35):
successful branches of Commodore, or rather branches that were profitable,
and on April twenty nine, Commodore filed for bankruptcy and
transferred their remaining assets to trustees to pay off their creditors. Yeah,
they essentially went into liquidation. So, uh, first you had
part of Commodore, the UK branch, attempt to purchase Commodore International,

(32:55):
but they themselves weren't really in a great position to
do that. Yeah, once a parent company goes under, then
they're just basically trying. They're they're holding on by selling
off old inventory. So they liquidated. And then you had
another company come in in ninety five and they buy
Commodore International for just fourteen million dollars. This is the

(33:17):
same company that made a billion dollars in sales of
a of a successful PC. Well in Commodore bought a
Mega for twenty four millions. So yeah, now you have
the combined Commodore Amiga companies sold for less money than
than common to respect for just Amiga. Well, this new
companys com They split Commodore and Amiga, make them two

(33:39):
separate companies again, and they try to grow Commodore really
fast and it's too fast and they go into liquidation
a year later. Yep. So then where does Amiga go. Well,
Amiga gets sold to Gateway two thousand and Gateway had
these big plans for the Amiga brand and and all
these things they wanted to do, and they didn't make
good on their promises, and a few years later in

(34:00):
n they sold Amiga to Amino Development. And since then
Amiga has been in a nut of lawsuits, passing patents
around and eventually acquired by Commodore USA. And so you
had another company, to computers that bought the Commodore brand
in nine seven, they tried a few things, but nothing

(34:21):
really took off, nothing really took hold, and so they
eventually sold Commodore to uh yeah Ronemomo. Yeah, Rnemo Media.
Okay here you're right, is yeah Ronimo. But that happened
in two thousand four, Yes, in two thousand and ten
is when we got Commodore USA. So that tells you

(34:43):
how long Amiga had been floating around, and they had
plans to make computers using the Commodore and Amiga names again.
And the owner of Commodore USA passed away in two
thousand twelve, and since then it's just all kind of
faded away. Yeah, so it's it's sort of like not

(35:04):
with a bang, but with a whimper kind of approach.
And you may have heard like there was a like
a Commodore sixty for sort of an emulator that came out.
It was not that different from you know, the the
NES emulator console, the tiny one that you can get
and attached to your computers, got like thirty games attached
to it. There was a version of that. There are
also emulators online for some of these computers and computer systems.

(35:28):
Their emulators that allow you to run old Amiga software.
For example. Uh so there's still a community out there,
a passionate fans of these computers, and I think if
you ever explore any of those communities, you will see
sort of not just fondness and nostalgia for the machines,

(35:50):
but also just a deep sadness for what happened with
the company. Yeah. I think a lot of what happened
with the company maybe could have been staved off. They
might have had a different outcome if Trammel hadn't been
so cut throat. He had the pricing and the competitive
side of business down, but he didn't have the relationship building.
You need to make good with your consumers. You need

(36:11):
to make good with the people who resell who sell
your product or resell your product, and he just he
didn't even make his employees very happy. So I think
there was just a fundamental also mismatch between Gould and Trammel,
and it just ended up being a problem that ultimately
caused Commodore to collapse. And this isn't to put the

(36:34):
blame on either party solely. I think it was just
it was just one of those bad combinations, like occasionally
in companies see combinations where you get like the idea
man or idea person, I should say, and then you
get like the business minded person, and then together they
do amazing things because they compliment one another. In this case,

(36:55):
I would say that the two styles did not compliment,
They competed with one another. And uh, you know, I
I don't know that the company would have succeeded with
a different person backing it financially than Goold. I don't
know that it would have done any better with Trammel
just being in charge the whole time. I also don't
know that it would have done any better had Gould

(37:16):
picked somebody else besides Ali to lead the company towards
the end of its life. Uh. Some people believe that
Commodore was already too far gone even by that stage.
So uh, it's it was a tough thing to to
see happen, because again, it was instrumental in those early
years in the personal computer age. And if things have

(37:37):
gone differently, we might not be talking just about you know,
the the Microsoft Windows based PCs and Apple computers. We
might also still be talking about Commodore machines. And I
would be such a computer whiz. I guess man, I
really shouldn't have put all of my apples into the
Amiga basket because now I don't know how anything else works.

(38:00):
Spent all of my build points for computer nerd references
on common or six. I mean, it's kind of how
I feel about like using Microsoft Word to this day.
I was raised on word perfect, so I I stole,
I'm not the best at word and that's that's a

(38:20):
ship that sailed like twenty years ago. Anyway, this was fascinating,
it was it's it's one of those stories, like I said,
that's just so dramatic with the politics involved in it
and seeing how uh, these disagreements at the executive level
can really affect a company. And in some ways you

(38:41):
can say that this points back to the same old
story we've told a thousand times on this show, the
whole succession planning and leadership changes, and how that's absolutely
fundamental to making sure a company succeeds and once in
a while it works out great and then very frequently disasters.
But whether it's disaster or success, today's story has come

(39:06):
to a close. So arial what if someone wants to
be like our wonderful listener today and suggest a topic
to us, how would said hypothetical person reach out literally,
they could reach out by emailing us at feedback at
the Brink Podcast dot show that's correct, or you can
also visit our website that is the Brink Podcast dot Show.

(39:29):
You will find there an archive of all of our
past episodes. You will also find a little more information
about your beloved hosts. And this has been a fascinating
walk down the history of a company. Can't wait for
the next one, So you guys, just keep those suggestions coming,
because it's it's fantastic. We love that you are a
part of an integral part of this show and we

(39:52):
greatly appreciate it. And until next time, I have been
Jonathan Strickland and I have been aerial casting. M Business
on the Brink is a production of I Heart Radio
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