Mar
18
2008
Evil Business 101 by Jack Tramiel

image image Remember the Commodore 64, the best selling computer of all time? Remember how cheap it was? $200 when its competitors were 5-10 times as expensive? Well, there’s a great story in this free Play Value podcast about the history of Commodore. 

Apparently, founder Jack Tramiel was such a ruthless businessman, obsessed with vertical integration, he drove prices into the basement using this clever little trick:

  1. Buy parts in bulk from a small company on credit
  2. Neglect to pay the company for the parts
  3. Wait for the company to nearly go bankrupt
  4. Buy out the company dirt cheap
  5. Forgive their own debts
  6. Rinse, repeat.

Pure, unadulterated, evil business genius!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 9:56 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Evil Business 101 by Jack Tramiel”

  • Makes me feel better that I was a TI 99/4A user instead!

    Kieran 3/19/08 @ 4:16 pm

  • I was a Group Vice president resposible for all semiconductor and computer operations world wide for Commodore International. I joined the Commodore as a vice president in 1979 and shortly thereafter was promoted to Group Vice President. It was one hell of a ride. Sales were $77,000,000.00 in 1979 and hit over one point 2 billion in three years.
    Would enjoy hearing more.

    Elton H. Southard 7/15/08 @ 1:48 pm

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