Brainboxes I Company Profile
ad in the Liverpool Echo where someone was looking for a hardware/software developer and as result I ended up working as a contract developer. It gave me a living and enabled me to support the development of Brainboxes." The company however started to grow and began hiring people in 1985. "We took on staff to help manufacture some of the interface designs I was coming up with. But to be honest it wasn't until we had been in business for around seven years that we felt we were self-sustaining. The 1980s were not an easy decade to start a company, especially in this part of the country."
Brainboxes focused primarily on security at first, providing interfaces for security systems linking TV monitors and video equipment and the company found itself working with some big clients, both locally and nationally.
"One of the most interesting projects we worked on was incorporating the date and time onto video recordings – a mundane feature today but back in the 1980s it was difficult to do and very expensive. "We came up with a box that was able to superimpose the date and time on the video signal and have it recorded. We ended up supplying a number of very large domestic customers and that market for video recording brought in a regular source of funds that helped to sustain what was then a still fledgling business. "It was hand-to-mouth at the beginning. We looked to cast our bread upon the water and grab whatever came our way. The more work we did, the more we were recognised. I wouldn't say that we
had a business strategy back then; we were growing but we were basically following the money. "We did achieve some notable successes but I'm a great believer in that the harder you work the luckier you are." Through the second half of the 1980s the company achieved some notable milestones. Winning the Liverpool Echo's Flying Start competition enabled the company to move into new offices in the Wavertree Technology Park, "we'd been
premises and everything had been going remarkably well, we were growing, I'd invested in new equipment and taken on new staff - but then the recession hit and hit hard."
Sales plummeted and the bank, which had been so keen to lend to the business just a matter of months before, demanded early repayment of its debts. "There was a lot of pressure on the business. I had to lay off staff and take some hard decisions. "Adding to our problems at the time
were the banks. They changed their lending policies over-night and demanded immediate repayment of our outstanding debts. That was a big lesson for me. Since then I have never trusted the banks and have entirely self-funded the development of the business. It was a tipping point for me. We had to tough it out. We re- mortgaged the house and paid the bank off and I vowed never to be put in that position again."
The ED-549, a new Ethernet networking device designed for remote monitoring of multiple analogue inputs in industrial environments
working out of our house since the business had been established," and it achieved a series of notable design wins including a design for the special effects control system used in the smash West End success Miss Saigon.
In 1990 the company was looking to
expand. "We were keen to move into new
Brainboxes survived and building on the success of a range of serial card solutions it had begun to develop in the 1980s, it saw a return to growth as the recession receded and the economy entered a long period of expansion.
"One of our key strengths is that we develop a lot of new product. The market for serial cards was huge in the early 1990s and we were able to take advantage of that, offering a broad range of cards." Throughout the rest of the decade the company continued to grow driven by new product development and investing in standards and the latest production capabilities. In 1994 it achieved ISO
9001accrediation covering the design, manufacture and supply of all its products and in 1996 it launched the world's first PCI modem. New products were being rolled out all the time and significant world firsts were being recorded, whether that was the first PCMCIA Bluetooth card to use a CSR Bluecore chip (2000) or the first Vista Serial Drivers to achieve WHQL qualification - the company was a leader in the market. After thirty successful years it can count Cummins, HP, IBM, Panasonic, Reuters and Santander among its customers and it is a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner. "Businesses, especially technology businesses like ours, need to invest in new product. When the downturn hit in 2007 many of our competitors cut back on their R&D and I think that is a mistake, we took a different path.
"I passionately believe that in order to succeed you need to be developing product and you need to be always looking for new markets, surely that is what a technology company should be all about. Some 70 per cent of what we sell today was developed after 2007." As if to prove his point Walsh highlights the launch earlier this year of the ED-549 ethernet network device. Designed to remotely gather analogue input signals over an Ethernet network it is capable of delivering access to real-time data in a variety of industrial environments. "It is easy to use, flexible and it's configurable."
Brainboxes may be celebrating its 30th anniversary but it is certainly not showing any sign of slowing down. ■
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Components in Electronics
October 2014 19
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