![]() ![]() When the paper tape industry began to falter due to new technology like bar coding, the partners decided to pursue the latter. Their creativity and virtual factory paid off, as Bell and Howell and many other clients signed with Data Specialties over the next few years, eventually earning the company a 50 percent share of the paper tape punch and related machinery market. Thinking fast, the engineers took apart already-assembled machines and spread them throughout their 1,320-square-foot office space, hired a secretary and workers to reassemble the machines for the day, and enlisted their wives to call every ten minutes impersonating customers. came calling with a major contract, contingent upon inspection of Data Specialties Inc.'s manufacturing plant-which did not exist. was located in Highland Park, Illinois, and had reached revenues of $90,000 in 1971 total sales climbed by 360 percent to $330,000. Within days an order came in from an Ohio-based division of Monsanto Corp., followed by two more orders in the next several weeks.īy the end of 1970, Data Specialties Inc. After eating and sleeping in the car the entire trip, the partners were almost ready to give up, but decided they would give their venture another two weeks before calling it quits. Kaplan then borrowed his father's car for a jaunt to the East Coast to drum up business. The partners decided that Kaplan would handle the management, marketing, and money side of Data Specialties' business and Cless the technological aspects. Able to come up with only $70,000, they hired themselves out as consultants and continued working on a paper punch machine to collect data while attached to other instruments. The two hammered out a new $1.5 million business plan to design and produce printing machinery, then set about raising the necessary capital. Unable to afford any retaliatory legal action, Kaplan and Cless were forced to relinquish the machines' designs in return for the lawsuit being dropped.Ĭiting the incident as "devastating but one of those lessons that can't be taught," Kaplan and Cless were left with a loft full of parts for 475 punch machines and no money from their first three months of business. They later discovered, however, that the client wanted only the prototypes so it could manufacture the machines on its own the client then sued the engineers for breach of contract when they would not hand them over. Kaplan and Cless then concentrated on designing machines for the second contract, creating a revolutionary punch machine that could print passbook and bookkeeping entries as well as customer receipts, all at the same time. As the remainder of the machines awaited assembly, the client suddenly canceled. Thrilled, Kaplan and Cless quit their day jobs and pushed hard to complete the initial order-of which only a fraction were finished and paid for. Hiring 15 part-time workers to assemble parts during the day and on weekends, Kaplan and Cless then received a second, multimillion-dollar order for 2,000 machines from a client in the banking industry in response to an ad they had placed in a Florida trade publication. Receiving an order for 500, Kaplan and Cless borrowed $20,000 to produce the machines and worked nights in a Chicago loft to complete the order. While employed full-time as project engineers at Teletype Corp., they began to design machinery after hours.Īfter a client expressed interest in their work, they pooled their savings and came up with two punch machine prototypes using paper tape. ![]() Kaplan had graduated with honors from the Illinois Institute of Technology and received a prestigious National Defense Education Act fellowship (which he relinquished after deciding not to earn a Ph.D.), while Cless had attended the University of Esslingen in Germany, where his mechanical engineering skills had earned him ten patents. ![]() Kaplan and Gerhard Cless contributed $500 each to found Data Specialties Inc., a manufacturer of high-speed electromechanical products such as hole-punching and tape-reading machines. In 2002, Zebra was named one of Forbes magazine's "200 Best Small Companies in America." The company caters to a wide variety of industries including consumer goods, manufacturing, automotive, healthcare, electronics, and warehousing and distribution. As a manufacturer and international distributor of bar code and automatic identification labeling, Zebra Technologies Corporation develops and builds thermal bar code label and receipt printers, card printers, radio frequency identification smart label printers and encoders, and a variety of related supplies. The mysterious series of lines and numbers called bar coding has provided a thumbprint of products since the 1970s, conveying instant information on model, price, weight, and dozens of other product characteristics. ![]()
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