Around 1987 I started Laserworks. We were an authorized dealer for Xerox Ventura Publisher. We were also an Authorized Dealer for LaserMaster.
We developed this position as a vertical market serving printshops, book publishers and self-publishers. LaserMaster made custom hardware for computer typesetting users who wanted better quality than the industry-leading 300 dpi laser printers built by Hewlett-Packard. This add-in card would drive common HP laser printers to resolutions of 1000 dpi. LaserMaster also made their own 1000 dpi printer. This was a good vertical market for us as most computer stores did not know anything about the GEM operating environment on which Ventura ran. We claimed the title “Arizona’s Foremost Experts in Desktop Publishing.”
We founded the Arizona Ventura Publisher User Group where we shared ideas and updates on the newest software and applications. I participated with the Arizona Author’s Association even though I was not an Author myself. We also did typesetting for book publishers including one that did text books. One of our largest projects was the typesetting of the Code Book for the City of Mesa, Arizona. Ramada Inn was also one of our clients. We typeset their training manuals in French and Spanish.
Ventura Publisher was one of the first software products to do “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWIG) display of the design of books and printed material. Computers in this era were 16-bit and using extra memory needed to run high resolution displays was a technical challenge that helped us establish our market position. Digital Research Company produced an alternative to Windows, DR DOS and the GEM operating environment on which Ventura Publisher ran.
We were reasonably prosperous in this endeavor until Corel bought Ventura Publisher and moved it to the Windows environment. Corel did not provide a mechanism to convert the GEM Ventura files to run on their Windows Corel Ventura. The Windows version lost many of the advantages of the GEM version and the files for books typeset in the GEM version could not be transferred to the Windows version. Read more details about Ventura Publisher here.
Microsoft put us out of that business. At that time, our vertical market went horizontal and competitive. We lost our established market position. Lesson learned: Opportunities in technical hardware and software change often and have a limited window of opportunity. Read or listen to the tape Who Moved My Cheese by Dr Spencer Johnson. I highly recommend this book/parable to anyone facing a major change. Here is a short video of Who Moved my Cheese.