Digital BW, The Print

Jon,
>
> My understanding was that MIS was acquired from the original owner (Bob).

I don't think it was an acquisition.  Justin Powers is the manager, and Bob Zeiss is mostly retired.  However, he still seems to be involved in policy types of decisions.

> ... it was moved from his "garage" to a much larger location ...

That occurred long ago.  The only time I visited the facilities, it was in the business park, and not fully utilizing the space at all. The main reason they seemed to have so much space was to store their too large list of products. 

While MIS has a huge list of products, during the peak of the dedicated B&W days (i.e., pre-2400), B&W was a major part of the business.  UT2, for example, became their largest single product within about a week of it being introduced.  That suggests to me that at least at that time, a significant part of their total business came from this list.  

Consistent with this was the strangest call I received from Bob one evening.  He had apparently had a bit to much to drink and called me with the question: "What will it take.  Everyone has their price."  He was paranoid that I had some hidden agenda and MIS was getting too dependent on products that were associated with me.  I told him to relax.  I do what I do because I can and enjoy it.  

I also do what I do because for 25 years I worked in antitrust fighting the large companies that were constantly trying to crush small innovators.  (One of those was a small company called Intel.  My, how things change.) 

Bob was a mechanical engineer at the TRW auto parts division.  He ended up being in charge of the Management Information Services division, and that's actually where "MIS" came from.  He was accustomed to answering the phone that way.  I thought it was "Michigan Ink Supply."  No, but I think they ran out at got the rights to that name to stop someone else from doing so.

If Bob had been a serious businessman, I think he would have run MIS much differently.  I think we customers have benefited greatly from having 2 good suppliers.  We've also probably benefited from Bob's casual way of running MIS.  I don't think he ever thought in terms of profit maximization.  When a larger company looked at acquiring MIS the books were what you'd expect of a retirement garage business.  The large company couldn't figure out what was going on.  Bob's main interest was always using his mechanical engineering background to come up with new devices -- CISs, ink loading machines, etc.  He's no MBA type.

At any rate, I hope the field continues to support dedicated B&W inksets. 

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com