Computers: Successful Stripling

“Make a note of the name of Nixdorf,” read advertisements that have been appearing in West German news papers. By such direct promotion, a stripling in the computer field has established its own European image among such veterans as IBM, Machines Bull and Siemens. With only 700 employees in a factory in the Westphalian town of Paderborn, Nixdorf still sells two out of every three small digital computers bought in West Germany. At the annual Hannover fair, Nixdorf’s first-time display became a magnet for Germans interested in business machines; of the fairgoers who visited the Nixdorf booth, 780 were classified as “serious customers,” and the company now anticipates at least 200 new sales as a result. Founder-Owner Heinz Nixdorf, 43, has also completed his first corporate takeover: he recently acquired the Cologne firm of Wanderer-Werke, a leading manufacturer of office equipment that had been selling Nixdorf computers under a Wanderer label.

Nixdorfs success stems from his hunch that smaller companies have neither the money nor the need for big computers to handle bookkeeping and inventories. A physics major at the University of Frankfurt 16 years ago, he first peddled his idea by traveling from company to company on a motorbike and offering to build a small computer for only $8,000. He eventually found a customer in a Ruhr Valley utility firm. When Nixdorf and one assistant built an economical working computer for the company, so many orders quickly followed that Nixdorf quit school and opened his own shop. Since that time, he has sold 5,000 small computers. Even without new orders from the Hannover fair, he anticipates selling another 4,000 this year alone for total sales of at least $25 million.

Name Plate on the Door? Nixdorf continues to concentrate on small-think even though other computers are getting bigger and faster. His company is ready to turn out a computer that uses either keyboard, punch cards or tape, as the customer demands; it adds whatever memory capacity is required to do what the purchaser wants. Prices, depending on sophistication, range from $5,000 to $80,000. Nixdorf remains cordial with the big boys by buying printers from IBM and making a data-logging small computer for Siemens.

This year Nixdorf expects to clear $3,000,000. As for the future, the market appears almost limitless. In West Germany alone, Nixdorf estimates that another 100,000 small computers can be sold. Outside Germany, the market is even greater, and Nixdorf is gearing for it. One reason the company acquired Wanderer was to get its export network; in addition, Nixdorf will open its own sales offices this year in Switzerland, Italy and France. Business is so good, in fact, that the company might even finally put a distinguishing name plate on the door of its yellow-brick Paderborn office.