Kalok

History

Kalok Corporation was founded in Sunnyvale, California, in February 1987 by Steven Kaczeus and Wayne Lockhart. The company's founders had extensive prior experience in the field of computer data storage, which helped them attract investment.

In August 1988, Kalok announced the KL341 and KL343, both 40-MB hard disk drives, along with the KL332, a 30-MB HDD. All three were 3.5-inch-diameter HDDs, cost under $330 each, and were for intended for the value-added reseller and OEM markets.

Monthly output at Oriental Precision went from 1,000 units in December 1987 The company were helped along with a business relationship with the Ayala Corporation, a large conglomerate in the Philippines. Kalok's move to the Philippines coincided with an unsuccessful coup d'état against the government of Philippine President Corazon Aquino in December 1989. The attempted coup forced Kalok's factory to shut down temporarily; although Lockhart was trapped a hotel in Manila during this time, he jokingly remarked at the time that this event was less disruptive than a four-week factory stoppage at Oriental Precision.

By October 1990, Kalok secured US$15 million in equity financing from investors led by the giant Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi, which itself acquired a 19-percent ownership stake in Kalok and provided an additional US$8 million line of credit. Other participating investors included Orix Group, a leading leasing firm in Japan, as well as two Japanese venture capital firms: Techno-Venture Co. and Tokyo Venture Capital. Sunwestern Investment Group of Dallas, Texas, was erstwhile the sole U.S.-based investor in Kalok.

Kalok's HDD sales peaked at US$80 million in 1990. The company went into precipitous decline in the early 1990s, with sales falling to $42,000 in 1992, from $60 million in 1991, largely due to Oriental Precision entering court receivership in South Korea and halting production of Kalok's HDDs. As a consequence, Kalok soon found itself in the red by over $28 million. Martel later resigned in June 1993, with David B. Pearce replacing him within this position.

In 1994 Kalok went bankrupt and Pearce moved on to found JT Storage Inc, another hard disk drive manufacturer with Sirjang Lal Tandon and Tom Mitchel. JT Storage would continue engineering and development programs from the defunct Kalok Corporation.

Hard drive models

KL-230

Services

One of their last offerings was a 100 megabyte 3.5-inch disk drive using a stepper motor head actuator (rather than the servo-based voice coil operated actuators used on most drives of that density) and was very limited in both access speed and reliability. The drive was manufactured in India, and was commonly found in very inexpensive generic PCs.

In the early 1990s, Kalok also designed hard disks for TEAC who used them as part of a removable hard disk drive system, which was also sold under the Kalok name. After Kalok failed in 1994, JT Storage (JTS) hired its founder as their chief technical officer, and licensed the patents involved from TEAC and Pont Peripherals.

References

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References

1. Aragon, Lawrence. (November 29, 1993). "The new guard". Ziff-Davis.
2. Martin, James A.. (December 7, 1987). "Kalok KOs Winchester cost, shoots market prices down". IDG Publications.
3. Kovsky, Steven. (July 25, 1988). "A disk-drive David takes aim at Goliaths". UBM LLC.
4. Staff writer. (August 8, 1988). "Kalok Offering 3.5-Inch Winchesters". Reed Business Information.
5. Hubbard, Holly. (December 18, 1989). "Kalok stays on course". UBM LLC.
6. Clark, Don. (October 10, 1990). "Low-Cost Strategy Lifts High-Tech Firm". San Francisco Chronicle.
7. Costlow, Terry. (January 11, 1993). "Kalok renews efforts in disk-drive market". UBM LLC.
8. Hostetler, Michele. (April 3, 1995). "Jugi Tandon starts disk drive firm with Kalok technology". Business Journal Publishing Company.
9. (November 1997). "Sustaining Competitive Advantage in Global Industries: Technological Change and Foreign Assembly in the Hard Disk Drive Industry". The Information Storage Industry Center, Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California.
10. "Low profile disk drive assembly".
11. "High capacity, low profile disk drive system".
12. "SD3250N, SD3360N, SD3540N (Removable Hard Disk Drives) - Installation guides and CMOS setup parameters".
13. (June 22, 1996). "Form S-4: Registration under the Securities Act of 1933: JTS Corporation".