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Biotech / Medical : Ergobilt (ERGB) - Ergonomic Chairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cosmo Daisey who wrote (868)	7/27/1998 1:56:00 PM
From: Dr. Seuss	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 900

Notice that tontotoo and Scott never post at the same time.....Same guy. Dr.s

To: Cosmo Daisey who wrote (868)	7/27/1998 1:56:00 PM
From: Scott D. Hakala	Respond to of 900

Cos, I don't know. Clearly, ERGB was realizing capital (from lenders) infusions through late 1997 based on the beliefs at that time. At this point, I haven't even attempted to identify what sales or product adoptions by customers were lost directly due to the SI posts as opposed to the Asensio posts. I am aware and have been told of some specific instances where SI posts were used as negative marketing by competitors and persons can even identify potential customers that used these posts as a reason for steering clear of ERGB's subsidiaries' products. This problem continues. I also haven't specifically identified the extra expense, the management distractions, the extra legal fees, etc. attributable to these posts. Since many of the issues at ERGB were management driven, I'm convinced that most of the current stock price drop is primarily due to mistakes internal to ERGB that may or may not have occurred or may not have been so severe had the attacks by shorts not taken place. My assessment was that management was in such a defensive and responsive posture that a lot of positive recommendations and controls were not properly implemented in 1997 and a lot of time was wasted on the distractions caused by responding to calls from investors and false accusations by posters. These distractions and the related management responses were ultimately not productive to the underlying sales and earnings of ERGB. As has often been my experience, attacks by shorts usually compound the internal problems, distract attention from the issues that need to be addressed and create even more loss in fundamental value in the end. I have seen attacks prevent a valid idea or concept from being funded and/or cause a company to prematurely fail or to fail when it should have succeeded. What is so surreal in this instance is the fact that the sales levels reported for the last fiscal year will probably be very close to certain projections made earlier in the Spring of 1997. The question, especially with respect to Foniks, is how much more would sales have been but for these very aggressive attacks by shorts and by competitors. An example of the negative surprises in 1997 includes the NPE litigation. At the time of the IPO, no one foresaw the expenses of fighting NPE or believed that NPE would make some of the claims NPE made in 1997, especially with regard to NPE's IPO later in 1997. Further, NPE"s attacks have hurt BodyBilt's sales in very tangible ways. Before the IPO, I felt that the settlement agreements cited in the recent summary judgement ruling made a legal risk from NPE moot. We just couldn't believe that anyone would think that the past settlement agreements between BodyBilt, Dr. Congleton and NPE allowed room for interpretation or for new litigation. Scott