Heathkit Educational Systems Closes Shop For Good 129
scharkalvin writes with this excerpt from the American Radio Relay League's site: "'For the second time since 1992, Heathkit Educational Services (HES) has shuttered its doors. Rumors of the legendary kit-building company's demise were posted on QRZ.com, with several readers bringing the news to the attention of the ARRL. In August 2011, Heathkit announced it was returning to the kit building business, and in September, that it would once again be manufacturing Amateur Radio kits. ... On LinkedIn, a popular networking site, HES Chief Executive Officer Lori Marciniak listed her employment ending at Heathkit as of March 2012. Likewise, Heathkit's Marketing and Sales Director Ernie Wake listed his employment ending in April 2012. An unsubstantiated report on Wikipedia states that "[in] December 2011, Heathkit Educational Systems laid off most employees and in March 2012, the company indefinitely suspended operations."' It looks like Heathkit is gone for good. Their plans on re-entering the kit market died with the current economy."
Re:Sad (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Sad (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Where would their customer base come from anywa (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't know if the market would have been there.
I used to dabble with transmitters when I was 16-17. Very cool, since that was at a time just before the internet and it made my world a whole lot bigger all of a sudden. Today, I can talk to anyone on the planet over the intertubes...
Similarly, I recently wanted to receive NOAA satellite images. I got a cheap digital tuner dongle, installed GNU radio on linux and built a cool antenna. No need to buy a kit anywhere.
Also recently, I wanted to build a device around a PIC micro controller. I was able to find all of the information on line, draw a professional dual layer PCB in KiCad and have it made at a very low cost. No need for kits either here.
I say the kit is dead. As much as I like building things and the idea of kits, now I can build from scratch with all of the information at my fingertips or use of the shelf hardware and a linux PC.
annoying (Score:4, Interesting)
What annoys me is that a Zuckerberg or a Simonyi or a Cameron could bankroll Heathkit, one of the root enablers of geekdom and a true part of technical history in the US, for less than they spend on tropical fish, and for less of their attention than merely uttering the phrase "make it happen".
Yes, I know, Heathkit chose bad timing to reenter the kit business. They should have laid low, held onto their IP, and waited until the economy was on an upswing. And no company is too big, or too small, or too geeky, to fail. But surely Heathkit deserves more.
Re:Sad (Score:4, Interesting)
My 5 yo daughter and 2 yo son are crazy about robots. When my daughter was younger she loved the R2D2 we got at Burger King. Later I bought the small R2D2 with sound effects.
For Children's Day -- I live in Mexico -- I bought Fisher Price Trio, the set that has a robot (amongst other models) on the box. And guess which model both my children love the most.... correct, the robot.
I soon want to try to teach my daughter some basic soldering skills. They also love to play with tools, for example, see: Hammer Time with Alice and Adam [youtube.com]. In my opinion, it's not about pushing tech on children, just making it available and let them discover the fun if they are interested.
And no, children are not getting adult tools in day care, or a soldering iron... So there is certainly a task for parents here. But I have it easy, I work at home, so my children see me do things like cleaning a computer, connecting things, programming, etc. Also I have a huge book collection, including a lot of books for (older) children that in my opinion libraries should have ;-).
As for Heatkit: sorry to read this. On the other hand, when I was 13 yo I desoldered parts from old TVs, made holes in a piece of acrylic plastic, and used that to support the components. I made "traces" with pieces of stripped wire. Oh, and I used a soldering iron for plumbing jobs, so I had to be very careful. And yeah, one day I accidentally picked it up by the wrong end. So, if you want to experiment with electronics there are plenty of options, no need for kits. Moreover, nowadays one can find countless circuit diagrams online, with instructions. Back in those days, I had to rely on the Elektuur (Dutch edition of Elektor).
They killed themselves (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a question, once they dropped the kits who was their customer?
Schools? Certainly not. Schools are busy teaching a state defined curriculum that does little more for teaching kids about technology and building things than would a lifetime spent finger painting. They weren't going to buy anything from Heath. If they thought schools were going to keep them in business then I would like to know what they were smoking!
Universities? Maybe... I don't know, any EEs out there want to speak up and say they did or did not use Heath materials in their classes? I'm guessing not As a CS major I never had a class with any sort of company provided program. It was just textbooks, mostly only read in certain parts and out of order following the professor's personal syllabus. Is EE different? Do universities use Heath for EE? Come on EE majors, respond and let me know!
Were they going to make a living selling courses to individuals? I haven't checked their offerings in quite a while and their site currently says to call for prices. When I did check some years ago I could have just about obtained a degree from an accredited university for the price. Why would anyone buy a course from Heath?
Was this the wrong time to get back into the kit business? I really doubt it. With the maker movement of today? Sure, most of society is very non-technical, non-geek preferring a night of brain-dead reality tv over building something but has it ever been any different? If you got in your Delorian and went back to the 50s when Heathkit was in it's prime do you really think you could pick any average person off the street, question them and expect to hear about the great new kit they assembled last Friday night? Yeah, right! But would you find anything like today's maker movement? People so into making that they commit to creating organizations with overhead like hackerspaces? I think this is a better time for a kit business then there has been in a long time, maybe ever. Heath came back with too little too late. Did they even really intend to succeed?
The mystery to me is what has kept Heath around all this time since they first discontinued kits? My suspicion is that nothing has. I don't think they were trying, I think they were just disassembling the company very very slowly so the money they made years ago could go into somebody's pocket without getting them in trouble. That's my theory anyway.
Re:Sad (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it is less that "people" aren't interested in how things work, anymore, and more that nobody cares about amateur radio or clunky robots.
I don't know about clunky robots, but, as posted here a few months ago, there is now a record number of ham radio operator licensees in the US. The statement "nobody cares about amateur radio" is uninformed.
Look at the timeline. Announce that they were back in the kit business in August. Announce that they were making amateur radio kits in September. Lay off most of the employees in December. Sounds like something else was going on if they only had a couple months to make the "return to kits" plan work.