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.