History of TurboCAD - Jeff Koblick
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Jeff Koblick
"In 1987 (?), Martin Sacks and Bob Mayer had adjoining booths at a trade show (which one?), and because the trade show traffic was so slow, the conversation led to merger discussions between the companies. In 1988, shortly after IMSI had its Initial Public Offering, which was underwritten by Stuart-James & Co. and raised about $3 million at $.05/share, Milan Systems merged into IMSI.
After IMSI's PagePerfect product flopped and a fire in IMSI's warehouse fortunately destroyed most of the excess PagePerfect inventory at great profit to IMSI (some say it was "Jewish Lightning" but Mayer and Koblick had rock solid alibi's), Sacks became president of IMSI. The company refocused (for the tenth time) on direct mail marketing of TurboCAD (except of course for a diversion into the introduction of VirusCure software).
As the direct mail model proved successful, the company ramped up to where it was dropping almost 1 million mail pieces a month, with about 30 telemarketers. These telemarketers were a colorful group with assorted backgrounds including strippers, transvestites and others who didn't know how to use TurboCAD or even what it did, but nonetheless became very adept at upselling the $29 symbol's libraries.
The following year, the company decided the real money was in retail distribution (since IMSI was losing $.01 per direct mail piece by that time). Rumor had it that Marty Shapiro slept with the CompUSA buyer (was it a guy?) and they became one of our first big retail customers. At the same time, Sacks and Mayer made various sojourns to Europe, Japan and Australia (primarily to the nude beaches in southern France during summer) and established offices in London, Paris, Sydney and South Africa (the latter so Sacks could write off trips to see family and play football with Philip Copeland).
In the mid 1990's, sales of TurboCAD exceeded $20 million annually, and by the end of the century over 1 million units of TurboCAD had been sold. The company offered a special promotional vacation trip to the "One Millionth Customer" who turned out to be coincidentally enough - Rob Berry.
