Bishop Inc., a struggling Agoura Hills producer...
Bishop Inc., a struggling Agoura Hills producer of engineering and design equipment, has hired John J. Theiss as its new president and chief executive. He succeeds Kenneth J. Kay, who resigned to work elsewhere but who remains a director of Bishop. Richard M. Drysdale remains Bishop’s chairman.
Theiss, 53, most recently was chief executive of Cardkey Systems, a Simi Valley producer of card-controlled security systems, such as those used to lock hotel rooms. He earlier spent 16 years at Xerox Corp. as a manager in its engineering products group.
Bishop, formerly called Bishop Graphics, has posted major losses in recent years, largely because it failed to keep pace with the computerization of its industry. Bishop chiefly supplies engineers and drafting professionals with equipment to design electronic circuit boards, and much of the work is now done with computerized workstations.
In its fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, Bishop lost $355,000 on revenue of $10.2 million, and it lost $2.5 million the previous year.
However, Theiss said Bishop has stepped up its own sales of computerized workstations through its InterCad unit, and that its cost-cutting steps have made Bishop profitable since Sept. 30. In the quarter that ended Dec. 31, Bishop reported pretax earnings of $38,000, compared with a pretax loss of $35,000 a year earlier. A $211,000 tax gain a year ago gave Bishop net income of $176,000.
Theiss said he wants to expand Bishop’s role in the workstation marketplace, while protecting Bishop’s share of the market for more manual engineering-design supplies.
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