Quote:
“… (by Johann de Waal) How Ken brought himself to sign Coktel Vision, I’ll never know.
…”
Wrong! You’re about to learn. Here’s “the rest of the story”…
Coktel was bought because:
1) I was looking to expand Sierra beyond games. Coktel Vision was #1 in Europe in education software.
2) I felt Coktel’s educational product would be a huge success in the US
3) Sierra was doing only about 10% of our revenue at the time in Europe. I liked the gentleman (Roland Oskian) who owned/ran Coktel, and thought he would be perfect to run Sierra’s european operation
4) Through adding together Sierra’s and Coktel’s european revenues, we were able to afford more sales offices in more countries.
The combination worked! Sierra’s european revenues exploded. When we sold the company, almost half our revenues were coming from Europe.
On the downside…
Coktel wanted to produce games, in addition to their educational software. Several games were produced, including Inca and Goblins. Both did reasonably well in Europe, and bombed in the US.
Our introduction of ADI, their european educational product, in the US, was a failure. The product was too “serious” for the US education market. It was very curriculum focused.
Overall: It was an awesome acquisition!
-Ken W