Topic: Disassembly complete: Heathkit is no more

[Pandora]

Heathkit is No More

[Libertas]

Link bogged out on me, what's this about?

[Pandora]

ST. JOSEPH — The remnants of a once-proud company with a long history in the Twin Cities are now on the auction block.

Owner Don Desrochers confirmed this week that Heathkit is dead.

Last known as Heathkit Educational Systems, the company that once employed hundreds of people has closed after defaulting on a lease at 2024 Hawthorne Ave. in St. Joseph Township. The work force at the end was a half-dozen.

In a phone interview from his home in Dallas, Desrochers said he has filed for bankruptcy and a bank now owns what’s left of Heathkit. Several bank-seized items are being sold in online auctions.

Lori Marciniak, Heathkit’s last president and CEO, declined to comment on the company’s demise.

Desrochers said she and the remaining handful of workers did a good job to the end.

“The situation was purely one of the economy,” he said. “Heathkit (Educational Systems) was primarily dependent upon federal and state funding for schools. Spending in education continued to drop down, and it was economically unfeasible to continue operating.”

The Heath Co. was founded in 1926 as an aircraft company but shifted its focus several times to remain competitive. After World War II the company switched to the electronics industry and bought a large surplus of wartime electronic parts to build kits. The company once employed as many as 1,800 people in the Twin Cities.

Heathkit was a division of the Heath Co., which eventually split to become Zenith Data Systems, which took most of the workers, and Heath/Zenith and Heathkit, which together kept a couple hundred workers, Desrochers said. Heath/Zenith was sold in 1999 to a corporation that moved it out of state. Heathkit stayed in the Twin Cities.

Heathkit had left the kit business in 1992. By then its Heathkit Educational Systems division was focusing on selling educational systems, such as hardware and manuals for career and vocational training. In 2008 the company vacated a building at 455 Riverview Drive in Benton Harbor and moved into the 25,000-square-foot section of a 330,000-square foot building in St. Joseph Township owned by Southshore Companies.

In 2011 Heathkit announced it would get back in the kit business. The work force was down to 15-20 people.

“When we got back into the kit business, we were losing the education business faster than we

were growing the kit business,” Desrochers said. “It was not sustainable.”

Phil Maki, treasurer of Southshore Companies, said Heathkit abandoned its lease around March, and Southshore got notice in May that Desrochers

had declared bankruptcy and Heathkit would be closed.

“It’s a sad thing for the community,” Maki said.

“A lot of us grew up using Heathkit products, and it’s sad they ended the way they did.”

Inspired Steve Jobs

Heathkit is mentioned in Walter Isaacson’s biography of the late Steve Jobs, co-founder and chairman/CEO of Apple Inc. Jobs talks of visiting the garage of Larry Long, an engineer who lived down the street from Jobs’ family. He says Long turned him on to “Heathkits, assemble-it-yourself kits for making ham radios and other electronic gear.”

Jobs says the kits helped him realize there was no limit to the things a person could build and understand.

“When I was a kid both my dad and the Heathkits made me believe I could do anything,” Jobs is quoted as saying.

Desrochers said he bought Heathkit in 2005 and had worked for the company prior to that, as president and CEO from 1995-2000. He said that during that time about 150-175 people worked there. In 2000 Desrochers moved to Texas to pursue another business opportunity. He bought Heathkit when it was offered for sale in 2005 but continued living in Texas.

He said closing Heathkit was hard for him.

“It was a tough decision, but you can’t operate and lose money. Hopefully the employees will find other employment. They were great, loyal employees for a long time,” Desrochers said.

John Oliphant of Benton Harbor said he started working for Heath/Zenith in 1984 and later worked for Heathkit, for a total of almost 28 years.

“It was a great company, and I enjoyed all my time there. I got to work a lot of different angles in the business. It was a good place to work, and the people there in the end were really good to work with,” Oliphant said. “Unfortunately the business was not able to continue.”

Oliphant, who was a project manager and technical writer for Heathkit, was laid off last December. He now works for Tri-County Computers in Watervliet.

“I’m actually doing what I used to write training courses about, repairing and maintaining

computer systems,” he said.

Lots of boys in my former neck-o-the-woods had a Heathkit-built radio.

http://www.heraldpalladium.com/news/local/disassembly-complete-heathkit-is-no-more/article_c00ffaac-d15b-11e1-a9e7-0019bb2963f4.html

[Libertas]

Ahhh, now I understand.  Never got into the radio or other electronic kits as a kid, mostly a model builder and rock hound.  Not until getting into my teens did I get interested in CB's and such.

So education/government killed it in the end...

 

You can't just leave a market, lose your main business and then expect to jump back into the old market again...I suppose most things of this nature are coming out of other companies now, perhpas mostly Asian based outfits?

[charlesoakwood]

At one time they were a competitive alternative to McIntosh amps and pre-amps.

When assembled correctly.  

                                                                           

[Alphabet Soup]

I built a few kits as a kid - never had the bucks to buy into anything elaborate but I still had fun and learned a bit. Just like "modern" cars are imponderable to work on, electronics had largely become dispensable and disposable items mass-produced through automation.

 

[radioman]

Seeing as how I am a ham radio operator, I have built many heathkits in my lifetime. Heathkit was a very big influence for a lot of us when we were kids just getting started. In fact, I still use the heathkit amplifier that I built back in 1975. it's sitting right here in front of me now, and I light it up every day!

After 37 years, it still is working like when i first built it. (oops, don't tell Obama, but I really did build it)

[trapeze]

I remember going through several electronics kits when I was a kid. Doing them gave me the confidence and
experience necessary to build my own computers from scratch and repair darn near anything. I would always look forward to a new catalog. The Radio Shack catalog was the same way. Anyone remember Edmund Scientific?

*sigh*

It's a different world.

[Libertas]

My first telescope was from Edmund, they still made the model up till recently, perhaps still do, Astro something or other.  Astroscan, it's in Trap's link.  I dunno today though, anything made in US, most everything from China now.

 

[Sectionhand]

That's too bad . I had a friend in St. Louis who used to build Heathkit radios as a hobby .