Missed our forecast by $14 million dollars (over)

The Dataproducts division of Hitachi was experienced in business-to-business sales of their printing solutions.

But they suspected there might be a market for their inkjet products as well, but going up against the "Big Three" of Hewlett-Packard, Canon, and Epson was pretty daunting. This is a highly profitable market that no one's giving up without a fight. Other vendors had tried, only to be sued for patent infringement or trade dress copyright infringement. The money's there, but you better draw between the lines ... very carefully.

I researched the market, met with key retail and SME buyers, and conducted customer interviews to find our what, when, and why they bought, and how they determined what to buy. I then wrote a complete business plan which was then funded by the Hitachi Board.

My teams and I designed packaging for 37 different products, and launched the product line into accounts such as Staples, CompUSA, and others.

Our goal was $6,000,000 for the first year but we missed that target by about 300%. We did over $20,000,000 in our first year. And Dataproducts became the largest non-OEM supplier in the inkjet market. Another "overnight" success.