DAK Industries
The DAK Catalog was published by DAK Industries a discount electronics importer in the United States, and was named after the initials of the company's owner, Drew Alan Kaplan.
Founding
DAK Industries was founded in 1966 and during the 1980s became a thriving mail-order electronics firm based in Canoga Park, Los Angeles, California. A gadget freak, Kaplan founded his business while studying psychology at UCLA. On the side, he sold reel-to-reel tapes and installed stereos.
Kaplan spent five years at UCLA, but never earned a degree, then went into business full time, setting up shop in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, to sell recording tapes. The Los Angeles Times once called DAK the L.L. Bean of consumer electronics. But it added he was reclusive and rarely granted interviews and refused to be photographed.
1980s
In 1985, Kaplan was involved in a lawsuit with his former printer and, according to court records, ordered a run then of 3.8 million catalogues. Before the Internet, companies like DAK relied on catalogues to generate sales and incurred the high cost of printing and mailing.
By the late 1980s, DAK was a $120 million-a-year business with around 400 full-time workers. It was selling everything from radar detectors and stereo speakers to security lighting systems, hand-held photocopiers and televisions with 2-inch screens.
Kaplan's thick DAK catalogue was mailed across the United States and Canada, and its hallmark was the unusual first-person style of the ads, each with Kaplan's byline and with up to 1,400 words of text per page. Every word was his own. The catalog featured colorful product descriptions. For example, of a computer modem, he wrote: "Sex Education 1A. You need to determine whether your computer's . . . connector is male or female. If you look at the picture above, you'll note that . . . connector has holes going in it. It's a female. If it had copper pins sticking out, it would be a male. Now wasn't that simple? So, if yours is female, order our male cable and modem program. . . ."
DAK was responsible for bringing a number of electronic gadgets previously unknown or little known in the US market to the public's attention; among these included an early bread making machine, and an early laptop, the Epson PX-8 Geneva.
Bankruptcy
In 1992, DAK Industries filed a petition seeking relief under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. DAK was forced to file for protection when Tokai Bank, a Japanese bank, suddenly pulled DAK's $18 million line of credit in August 1992. DAK continued in business until the case was converted to Chapter 7 in December 1994.
Kaplan wrote on his website, "Well the truth is, in 1994 I lost DAK 1. And it closed. I really can't blame anyone but myself. I was behind the banking relationship. It was the beginning of the Asian Meltdown. As far as I can see, my bank decided to retrench and we lost our credit line. I had never been able to find an American bank that liked the high volume/low margin business I had built."
DAK's catalog mailing list and customer database was valuable and sold during the bankruptcy proceedings to VentureDirect Worldworld. It was managed by Xactmail.com, a division of VentureDirect. DAK's founder Kaplan asserted it wasn't his buyers list but DAK customers were matched up against some other database.
Microsoft Dispute
During the bankruptcy case, Microsoft Corporation lost in a major lawsuit to DAK Industries in a decision that even today has significant implications not only for software licensors but also for copyright license agreements under which distributors are given the right to sublicense or sell directly videos, theater or television rights, or other exploitations of intellectual property. Microsoft, the Redmond, Washington-based computer software giant, had sought to obtain payment from DAK for a non-exclusive software licensing agreement covering mostly its Word product.
Microsoft in Microsoft Corp. v. DAK Industries Inc. (U.S. Ninth Circuit, 1995) had contended DAK was a debtor which continued to utilize the license after the bankruptcy filing without paying for such use as an expense of administration. The U.S. Ninth Circuit held, however, that DAK's bankruptcy case was not entitled to priority as administrative expenses, and would instead be treated as nonpriority general unsecured claims. Moreover, it found DAK as the debtor/licensee was not otherwise required to pay any administrative expense for its post-bankruptcy use of the license. Thus, DAK was not required to make any administrative payments to Microsoft, even though DAK made significant use of the software license following the Chapter 11 filing.
Rising from Ashes
After a few years hiatus, the company's founder has founded a successor business, DAK 2000 via the web. He got back the website dak.com from the Drew Kaplan Agency, Inc. after a May 2000 arbitration.