Company History
LaCie began life as two separate computer storage companies: LaCie in Portland, Oregon, USA; and électronique d2 in Paris, France. The two organisations focused their businesses on IT storage solutions, based on the SCSI interface standard for connecting external devices to computers. SCSI was adopted by Apple Computer as its main peripheral interface standard and the market for both LaCie and d2 became closely, but not exclusively, associated with the Macintosh platform.
La Cie, Ltd. (La Cie) was founded in July 1987 in Tigard, Oregon, USA. Joel Kamerman, his parents Robert and Tudy Kamerman, and Roger Bates founded La Cie. Joel Kamerman was La Cie's president and general manager from July 1987 through January 1997.
Joel Kamerman founded La Cie on three principles: (1) profit was more important than revenue; (2) product differentiation would create profit; and (3) vertical integration was key to La Cie's long term viability. La Cie's objective was to create premier products and differentiate the company through industrial design and value added software.
In the US, La Cie was acquired by Plus Development, a subsidiary of the storage manufacturer Quantum in December 1990. As a subsidiary of Quantum, La Cie was licensed as the exclusive manufacturer of Apple-branded external SCSI hard drives, using Quantum hard disks. Joel Kamerman and Scott Phillips negotiated the deal between Apple Computer and La Cie.
In Europe, the French company électronique d2 was founded in 1989 by Pierre Fournier and Philippe Spruch, working from their apartment in the 14th arrondissement of Paris. d2's main activity was assembling hard drives in external SCSI casings and selling them as peripheral devices.
By 1990, the company had outgrown its small beginnings and moved to new 900 square meter premises in rue Watt, also in Paris. By this stage, designing casings was no longer sufficient for d2 to maintain a competitive edge, and so the company began to develop its own products and invest in R&D. d2 began to open subsidiaries around Europe, the first in London in 1991, followed by offices in Brussels and Copenhagen. The company began to expand its business beyond the Mac market and target PC users.
In 1995, électronique d2 acquired the US company La Cie, a subsidiary of Quantum. LaCie was operating in the same market niche as électronique d2, and the buyout gave d2 a foothold into the North American market.
In 1998, it was decided to adopt the name LaCie as a worldwide brand, dropping the d2 name from its product range (although even today, several products still retain reference to it). The company has been known since then as LaCie.
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