History (1991): Rexon to Take Over WangDAT

According to an official press release, “Rexon Inc. and WangDAT, Inc. have announced an agreement in principle to merge.”

But effectively, Rexon is acquiring WangDAT (Irvine, CA) that will become a subsidiary of the group that includes Tecmar (Solon, OH), Sytron (Westboro, MA) and Wangtek (Simi Valley, CA).

At last Comdex, Amyl Ahola, president and CEO of WangDAT, confirmed the event: “It is not finished, but will be completed in the next 30 days.”

According to an Archive’s executive interpretation who just left the Rexon (Manhattan Beach, CA) group: “It’s an internal merger. WangDAT was loosing money and its main investor, Hambrecht and Quist, who also invested in Rexon, preferred to merge the two companies.”

Ahola didn’t unveil the amount of the transaction nor the company’s results. He said that WangDAT had posted near $15 million sales in the FY ending September 1991 and that it had sold a total of close to 25,000 DAT drives. The company announced net revenue of over $7.5 million for its FY90.

But there still is a problem for Rexon, between its new acquisition entirely focused on DATs based on a mechanism from Mitsumi (who supplies Hewlett-Packard), and Tecmar with part of its activity also in DAT units, based on a JVC basis.

“In the future, Wangtek will be QIC only and WangDAT, DAT only. Wangtek’s DATs will probably disappear,” said Ahola.

According to the common Rexon/ WangDAT press release, the merger is going to allow the group to have the largest share of the non-captive DAT market worldwide. This implies the second place behind HP, including all products, captive or not. Last June, an executive from Rexon told us that Tecmar had sold 7,000 4mm drives in 1990 and expected to ship as much as the double this year.

WangDAT was founded in February 1988. Two venture-capital firms, Hambrecht & Quist and Oxford Venture Partners, have made investments of over $8 million in the privately-held company. The HQ is located in a dedicated 27,000 square-foot facility.

The company markets a full range of DDS-DAT devices: half-inch 5.25- inch units with capacities ranging from 2GB to 5GB, 3.5-inch ones with up to 8GB with data compression using the Hewlett Packard DDS-DC chip, a 4-cartridge loader integrated in a 5.25-inch full-height form factor.

WangDAT was the fourth company founded by Dr. Bene C. Wang, a specialist in magnetic tapes for computers, who previously launched Wangco, Rexon Business Machines and Wangtek he had left in 1986.

Let’s also mention that Robert S. Werbicki, former president of Wangtek’s DAT division has just left this post and was appointed to the newly-created position of president of Rexon’s 2 companies Tecmar and Sytron. On his side, Hugh Cagnier, who headed Wangtek’s QIC division, was named president of the entire Simi Valley subsidiary.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠46, published on November 1991.