COMPANY DEBUT
By early 1989 it was clear that the “basement business” was large enough to warrant moving to a commercial office location. Scott resigned from his position at the construction and real estate concern and he and David leased a small office and retail space in White Bear Lake, MN. The space would be divided in to a workshop, offices, and retail space. The newly formed company would be called LR Data, Inc. (The L and R came from a family business operated for a brief time in the 1970’s, Lantern Realty Corporation; use of these initials was a decision that hindered marketing efforts for years.) The new business would have 3 revenue lines – small business system design and integration, retail sales, and repairs.
LR Data, Inc. opened its doors to the public in September of 1989. On display was IBM compatible computers, custom-built to order, as well as equipment from Atari Corporation. Peripherals and software lined the walls of the store. Accounting software deployment projects, still based on Open Systems Accounting Software, continued from the back offices. And, a full-time technician was hired to staff the repair shop.
Over the next 5 years all 3 divisions of the company expanded rapidly. Products such as Novell’s Netware and SCO’s Open Server UNIX were becoming popular and the company hired and trained resources to implement these systems. Open Systems Accounting Software was selling well and 3 full time technicians staffed the repair shop. By all measures the company was a success. While things were certainly good, David felt that a major shift in the industry would soon occur. Computers were increasingly becoming commodity items, Windows NT was here, and flat-file databases (like that used by Open Systems Accounting Software) had revealed their weaknesses. A new direction was needed, and in August of 1994, one was found.
A New Direction
Navision A/S was a Danish company with a radical product – Avista. Avista was a full business management and accounting software system based on a very unique development environment and database. The database was extremely advanced for its time and included features such as commit/rollback and optimistic concurrency found only in far more expensive tier 1 database products. The development environment provided tools for rapid development of product extensions and customizations. It was immediately clear to both Scott and David that this product would be the future of our company.
Navision A/S had an international growth strategy including establishment of local offices in each country Avista was sold in. In the United States, the local office was located in Atlanta, GA. Scott and David made regular trips to Atlanta completing product training and other requirements and preparing the company to actively sell Avista. By early 1995, the selling requirements had been met and the first two Avista systems were sold. In late 1995, Navision A/S released Navision Financials – a redeveloped Windows-native version of Avista. When David began to comprehend the enormous business potential the company had stumbled upon it became clear that the future of the company would be exclusively in selling, implementing, and servicing Navision.
In 1996 the company was engaging in projects of all types – selling and implementing telephone systems, microwave transmission systems, cabling, remanufacturing computers for the US Government, CNC machine tool hardware repair, and just about anything else having to do with electronics, radio, or computer technology. Many of these projects were immensely interesting and very fun to engage in but they were rarely profitable. As a result, the company decided to gradually phase out the retail and service business lines and focus on accounting software deployment projects exclusively. The phase out was complete by the end of 1999.