Having designed the Commodore International Ltd PET Personal Electronic Transactor, and moved on to found Sirius Inc, later Victor Technologies Inc before until he was caught out when the world discovered that runs MS-DOS didn’t mean IBM-compatible, Chuck Peddle hopes that he’ll soon be back with a bang. This time, his vehicle is THStyme, and Thystyme UK Ltd, based at Redditch, Worcestershire says its policy of ‘keeping the dealer alive’ by offering the lowest prices on the market is proving a success. Of course the company has a particular need to keep its resellers alive, since it is they who will distribute THStyme’s ‘revolutionary’ new products, currently under development in Moscow (CI No 1,949). But value-added resellers are not the sole focus for the present drive which has apparently attracted over 400 dealers so far, at a rate of around 20 to 30 a month. THStyme currently distributes around 2,000 IBM PS/2-, Mac- and Sparcsystem-compatible line items, including configure-to-order personal computers, value added accessories, disk drives, scanners, memory and monitors with cut-price, Russian-produced streamers and printers soon to be added to the product line. The company, which claims it has managed to undercut its competitors by up to 30%, has proved especially adept at shifting its tape back up systems and SuperVGA monitors; the latter, priced at UKP120 each, are currently shipping at a rate of 2,000 per month in the UK alone. The company’s Paris division is reputedly achieving similar levels of success, which bodes well for the new outlets due to open in Frankfurt and Madrid by the end of the year. How many dealers will eventually distribute THStyme’s radical new technology is not known but it is hoped that appropriate channels will established by the end of the year.
