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Non-Tech : Any info about Iomega (IOM)? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gary Wisdom who wrote (56091)	6/13/1998 11:12:00 PM
From: Rocky Reid	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 58324

>>But, what really, really, really bothers me is how come everyone else in the world can produce these things and make a profit with a much lower MSRP (ok, maybe not Syquest), and Iomega can't?<< Because Iomega is more interested in building pretty new buildings instead of R&D and cost-cutting. Iomega also has to pay high American salaries to Executives and regular workers. And to top it off, they are most adapt at spending huge amounts in Marketing. Iomega reminds me of the arrogance displayed by the American Car Industry in the 70's. Build and market crap that is unreliable while the Japanese start importing reliable, cost-saving cars at a good price. From what I remember, the Japanese kicked our ass. Castlewood's production is largely being handled by Japanese Aiwa. And Japanese firms are going to be leaner and meaner in this business. With the currently terrible Asian economy, Asia and Japan are going to pare down and streamline their operations like gangbusters. This will put a strain on competing American firms like Iomega. The Yen is trading at 145 to the $ right now. This puts Japan in a great advantage price-wise when selling products in the American market. It also makes American products sold in Asia/Japan horribly expensive. Castlewood's Orb is coming out at the right time. Interest in Orb is absolutely huge. I want one. It looks like I'll have to stand in a long line to get one though. Sigh.

To: Gary Wisdom who wrote (56091)	6/13/1998 11:15:00 PM
From: Senthil Sankarappan	Respond to of 58324

Marketing expenses were too high i.e 27% of sales. I think they did not care about their expenses since the sales were growing rapidly and they got caught when sales were slow. Now their aim is to cut the SG&A from 27% of sales to 15-20%. This will take some time and also i don't know if sales will slow down furthur due to less expenses. Their best bet is try to get into as many OEMs as possible and cut their expenses accordingly. I still don't know why they can't get into boxes of IBM and HP. This will earn them lot of credibility. i am holding this stock for all the future potential hoping they will execute but i am also bit worried that things are not happening as fast as expected. It looks like the rapid growth in the retail side is over now and they desperately need the help of OEMs. Their last earnings report says they shipped 13th Mil Zip by early March. The press releases now say they are over 14 mil. If we don't hear the 15th Mil announcement during PC EXPO, then they did not ship even 2 Mil for 3 months esp after so many advertisements and promotions :-< Clik! is a major trump card here. If it hits, they will be hot shot IOM again. We will find out next week if they can do any magic with Clik! -senthil

To: Gary Wisdom who wrote (56091)	6/14/1998 8:38:00 PM
From: JP Sullivan	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 58324

I agree with what you say, and would like to add that IOM owns the plant that produces the drives and (I think) the disks as well. In contrast, Castlewood is having the drives and disks made by third parties and yet it is able to earn enough money (I assume so, since it really is too small to play loss leader) to allow it to price the ORB and the disks at such attractive levels. The biggest concern I have is in the price of the disks. At $10 a pop, IOM should be raking it in, but that does not appear to be the case. If Castlewood succeeds in bringing to market a 4-6GB disk for $10, where do you think the Zip will end up? (At $10 for 4GB, the cost per MB is 0.2441 cents! The Zip disk would have to be selling at 25 cents a piece to achieve a comparative unit cost.) It would seem that the ORB represents a significant threat to the Zip market and is deadly to the Jaz market. Heck, it will definitely eat into the hard drive segment. I wonder how Iftikar does it.