Micropolis hdd

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Mon Oct 28 14:13:00 2002

> I can't find it online anymore, but about two years ago I stumbled
> across this fascinating article which discussed the demise of
> Micropolis, presenting it as a case study of business fraud.
>
> My favorite highlight had to do with Micropolis claiming much larger
> inventories of hard drives than they actually had. This was to make the
> company look as if it were more valuable. This excess inventory was
> primarily made up of a special class of hard drive, which in the company
> records were listed as "very hard drives". In reality they were bricks
> that had been boxed in Micropolis packaging.

Micropolis had their own problems, but I don't think we should accuse
them with out-and-out fraud without researching it a bit further.
The company that shipped bricks was Miniscribe, and one of their
executives was finally convicted when it was discovered that he'd
actually purchased the bricks on his credit card. (Note to self:
when buying materials for an inventory scam, pay cash.)

I very much doubt that any company records used the phrase "very hard
drives", since that wasn't brought up by the prosecution in the trial.
Sounds more like a clever phrase a reporter came up with.

> Apparently a few of them were even shipped to customers.

The true story may never be known, but I don't think any shipped to
customers that weren't aware of the plan. Some customers may have
agreed to help Miniscribe with their inventory problems (as in lack
of), because the customer may have been more interested in the promise
of a real drive delivered later than the company going out of business
sooner.

One of the surplus stores in the Denver area had a brick in their
display case with their disk drives; the brink had a sign saying
"Miniscribe 40MB". However, it was not an *actual* Miniscribe brick.

Miniscribe was acquired by Maxtor and was known for a time as "Maxtor
Colorado".

The only complaint I had with Micropolis was that their drives had a
very high failure rate.
Received on Mon Oct 28 2002 - 14:13:00 GMT