Printing Up a Package for Success : LaserGo Software Offers Cheaper Desktop System
As a child growing up in South Vietnam, Truc D. Nguyen said, he lived one day at a time, dodging incoming Viet Cong rockets and outgoing U. S. troop convoys that rumbled through Saigon streets.
Nguyen, now 35, not only survived war-torn Vietnam but has gone on to found and become president of LaserGo, the San Diego-based publisher of one of the nation’s hottest new software packages. From zero sales this time last year, LaserGo’s GoScript software is selling at the rate of 2,000 copies a month.
Nguyen, a computer sciences graduate of UC San Diego who left Vietnam in 1971, has published a software product that simulates PostScript, a leading software technology developed by Adobe Systems of Mountain View and that in 1985 helped usher in the age of desktop publishing.
Up to now, the phrase desktop publishing has been used mainly to describe the way personal computers, notably the Apple Macintosh, use expensive laser printers equipped with PostScript page description “language” to produce typesetter-quality page design and fonts.
Keeping the Cost Down
The PostScript-driven systems include a separate central processing unit, or CPU, built within the printer to translate the computer’s commands into the tiny dots that constitute the images and letters.
GoScript, by contrast, has given owners of cheaper dot matrix and ink jet printers the ability to produce documents with desktop publishing quality--all with four software diskettes that are downloaded onto a personal computer’s hard disk. The diskettes keep the cost of the system low because it functions without the additional CPU in the printer.
On the market only since June and still being sold without a major nationwide distributor, LaserGo’s two versions of GoScript have grown to their current sales rate from 200 units per month six months ago. GoScript retails at $195 for 13 fonts, or type styles, and $395 for 35 fonts, Nguyen said. LaserGo’s slice of the retail price is about 40%.
Nguyen said he expects to sign an agreement soon with Ingram Micro D of Santa Ana, the largest U. S. wholesale distributor of software. The agreement, still under negotiation but known within the industry, will boost sales of GoScript by at least 100%, he said.
LaserGo, which has just eight employees, should book sales of $2 million for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, up from less than $100,000 the previous year, said Nguyen, who developed GoScript based on an earlier version of PostScript in the public domain.
GoScript has benefited from enthusiastic reviews over the past few months in several trade publications, including PC magazine, InfoWorld and Byte. The company’s booths at the Comdex computer trade shows in April and last November were popular attractions, Nguyen said.
GoScript and its two competing products, Freedom of Press and UltraScript, fill “a significant and glaring niche in the market,” said Fred Thorlin, director of software industry services at Dataquest, a San Jose-based computer market research firm.
“Without these products, you would have to pay a $1,500 premium” to produce desktop publishing-quality graphics, Thorlin said, referring to the added cost of a laser printer above the cheaper printer hardware.
“GoScript is a very viable product, and the distribution agreement with (Ingram) Micro D suggests that someone with a lot of money has taken a good look at the company’s product and said that this is important,” Thorlin said.
Computers operating on GoScript take much longer to produce documents because the calculations are not done on a separate CPU inside the printer, as with the PostScript-based systems. And, because the GoScript file is being processed on the computer’s resident CPU, the computer owner must wait for it to be printed out before going on to other computing tasks.
Just Plug It in
Another drawback of GoScript mentioned by Thorlin is that “it’s just one more software package you have to fiddle with, whereas with PostScript, you just plug in the PostScript printer” to produce your documents.
But Thorlin said the slower speed is a an acceptable trade-off for the dramatic price difference between the two systems.
“GoScript is getting a bum rap” on the added time, he said. “The printing speed is appropriate to the processing power of the computer.”
How big is the market for products such as LaserGo’s?
The growth of PostScript developer Adobe Systems, which Thorlin said receives about $500 in licensing fees for each PostScript printer sold, may offer some clue. Adobe product marketing manager Derek Blazensky said Monday that the company booked sales last fiscal year of $83.4 million, up more than 100% from $39.3 million the previous fiscal year, making it one of the fastest-growing companies in the state.
Nguyen worked at several San Diego computer firms, including Softech and Personal Computer Products, as a computer programmer and software director before launching LaserGo in 1986. The company started out as a contract design firm for other companies and turned to developing proprietary products only after the contracts ran out in late 1987, he said.
“I didn’t get in this position overnight,” Nguyen said. “I’ve succeeded with a lot of luck and hard work. I’ve been working in this industry since 1974.”
Nguyen said he developed LaserGo from profits from his contract design work and didn’t bother seeking out venture capital, because the search would have taken longer than the development of the software.
At one point in early 1988, LaserGo nearly went broke and Nguyen was forced to lay off four other employees who were working on GoScript. The turning point was a successful showing of an early version of GoScript at a Hanover, West Germany, trade fair in June, 1988, that netted him an advance order of 15,000 units from a European distributor.
