To the "thread,"
There is a lengthy article this morning in Barrons Magazine on AT Cross, that has a new product on which you can take written notes and then transfer them directly into your computer for organization and manipulation. In short, it recognizes your handwriting.
The displays for that product are produced by TFS, and clearly are helping develop revenue, the flow of which is likely to get fairly heavy. More similar products are planned, and we will clearly be included in that as well.
Herewith a portion of the article:
The techies must have been snickering behind John Buckley's back when he showed up at the Comdex computer show in Las Vegas last November. After all, what business did the chief operating officer of A.T. Cross -- the pen company -- have operating a booth at the most celebrated high-tech confab in the world? It sounded like a corporate debacle waiting to happen.
If that's what the computer cognoscenti expected, they were dead wrong. The company's CrossPad, a kind of portable electronic notepad, was a big hit. When all was said and done, Buckley's exhibit had been named one of the four best at Comdex. More importantly, he'd had a visit and a short heart-to-heart with the grand pooh-bah of computerdom -- Bill Gates.
"He came over and told me he wanted the first one off the assembly line," Buckley recalls. That's heady stuff for a company that just started launching high-tech products two years ago. So, what caught Gates's fancy? The pad is an unassuming black plastic tablet containing an 8 1/2-by-11-inch legal pad that comes with what looks like a standard black-and-gold ballpoint pen. Here's the hook: The plastic pad can store an electronic copy of your handwritten notes, which then can be transferred to your personal computer. Once they're downloaded, you can rearrange them, search them by keyword, E-mail, print or fax them, just as you would a word-processing file, even though what you'll see on your PC monitor is an image of your scribblings. Some of the handwritten notes also can be converted into a computer text file. Sure, you could accomplish the same thing with a laptop computer; but try and type on the keyboard inconspicuously at your next meeting.
The pad weighs about 2.2 pounds and contains enough memory to store 50 pages of single-spaced notes or 100 pages of loose notes or diagrams. It's powered by four AAA batteries; the electronic pen that comes with it takes one AAAA battery. You also need Windows 95 for it to work on your PC.
The whole shebang sells for $399, although at least one retailer we talked to was willing to part with the high-tech tablet for $360 when we pushed for lowest possible price on the item. Buckley is convinced that this product will jump-start Cross's earnings, which have been moribund in recent years. "The vision is really to reinvent the writing instrument," he says. "You might say, 'John, that sounds ridiculous,' but communication is moving down the electronic highway." He's certain that Cross, which claims to have a lock on 46% of the "quality writing instrument" market, can bridge the gap between pens and computers in a unique way. He expects the Pen Computing Group to bring in $25 million, and most of those revenues will come from the CrossPad. Introduced in March, the product now is available in 1,600 retail locations, including Staples, CompUSA and Computer City. The number of outlets will ramp up to 3,000 in the next few months, according to Buckley.
He's hesitant to project his exact sales targets, although he says the PalmPilot -- the popular PDA, or personal digital assistant -- is a useful guide. PalmPilot sold approximately 300,000 units during the initial year of its launch. Sales more than quadrupled in its second year out of the block, eventually climbing to about 1.3 million. "If we could do that with the CrossPad, we could triple the size of this company" in revenues, says Buckley. (Cross had revenues of $154.7 million last year.)
Buckley seems to have a shot at hitting these numbers, if our recent conversations with retailers are any indication. Barron's contacted four computer retail outlets (two Staples and two CompUSA stores), where employees said the CrossPads were turning heads. Steffan Sonneveldt, a Staples manager in the Georgetown section of Washington, says he's been selling three to five of the new electronic notepads a week. "The sell-through has been fantastic," he adds. Sonneveldt even sold one to his aunt, a travel agent.
Interest in the CrossPad is not necessarily confined to the professional crowd, however. Students also have been coming in to the store for a look-see, he says. "I think people all across the spectrum are interested because it's not like anything else out there," he observes.
The article goes further, but you get the drift. Enjoy what is left of your weekend. |
