David Pleasance | Code Like It's 198x

In July 1994, three months after Commodore went into liquidation, the man running its British company told an American magazine that he wanted to buy the whole thing. David Pleasance had spent eleven years at Commodore, much of it selling its computers, the Amiga above all, in Britain. His case was that the British business was healthy and the corporation above it had been badly run, and he named the man he held responsible. The bid failed. What survives is an unusually frank record, in his own words, of how Commodore’s last years looked from its British subsidiary.

Fast facts

At Commodore: from 1983. He ran UK sales, then Commodore Electronics in Switzerland, then consumer sales in the United States in 1992.
Commodore UK: joint managing director with Colin Proudfoot from the spring of 1993 until the company closed in 1995.
The CD32: launched it in Britain in 1993 and chose the games for the bundle that winter.
The buyout: led Commodore UK’s bid for Commodore’s assets in 1994–95; withdrew at the auction in April 1995, which Escom won.
Afterwards: Tangent Music Design, a recording studio and an album made on Amigas (1995); the book Commodore: The Inside Story (2018).

Selling Commodore

Amazing Computing introduced him in 1994 as a man “credited by some for establishing the Amiga in the UK while he was in charge of Commodore’s UK sales”, whose “most notable achievement was the very successful software and hardware pack programs that combined Amigas and high-interest games”. His own summary was shorter: “I launched the Amiga in this country.”

In 1992 Commodore moved him to America. AmigaWorld reported that August that he had been hired as vice president of consumer sales in the United States, after running Commodore Electronics Limited in Switzerland, where he oversaw operations in 27 countries, and promised a more open approach to user groups, the press and developers. He later said he had spent “ten months in 1992 in America looking at the retail market”.

In the spring of 1993 Kelly Sumner, Commodore UK’s managing director, left for the American publisher Gametek, to open its British office, and Pleasance and Colin Proudfoot took over jointly. Pleasance was candid with CU Amiga within weeks of taking the job. “Having been at Commodore 10 years though, I mean, I don’t know if we invented the phrase ‘vapourware’ but we are certainly as much a part of that philosophy as any other company,” he said. “I just think it’s wrong to indicate to people that such and such a product is going to be available when it obviously isn’t.”

The CD32

That summer Commodore launched the CD32, its Amiga-based CD console, at the Science Museum in London. The One described the scene: a hall so over-subscribed that it was “standing room only”, and Pleasance, “Commodore’s joint MD”, on the podium with his face projected on a video wall behind him, “one all-too-visibly nervous man”. After his introduction came the television presenter Chris Evans, then Commodore’s president Mehdi Ali and its engineering chief Lew Eggebrecht.

The console went on sale with two games in the box, Flair Software’s Oscar and Millennium’s Diggers. Before Christmas 1993 Commodore added Wing Commander and Flair’s Dangerous Streets, kept the price at £299.99, and gave the pack a new sleeve. Pleasance told Amiga Format that the first bundle had been rushed:

We were under a lot of pressure to get the bundle into the shops, and we launched it when we weren’t really ready. There wasn’t that much software to choose from to put in the package, but now there are plenty of games around and we had the opportunity to choose the best.

Amiga Power gave the new lead game, Dangerous Streets, 3%. Pleasance’s forecast was more than 70,000 CD32s sold in Britain by Christmas and another 25,000 in the first quarter of 1994, and he said the A1200 had sold so well that summer that he had raised its order by 60 per cent, to 180,000. Amiga Computing reported in February 1994 that the CD32 had reached 75,000 British sales by the end of 1993, “around a third of the original projection made at launch”. In May 1994 Commodore added Microcosm and The Chaos Engine to the bundle. By then the parent company had announced its liquidation, on 29 April 1994.

From January 1994 Pleasance also answered readers’ letters personally in a monthly column in Amiga Format.

The buyout bid

Commodore UK stayed in business while the liquidators in the Bahamas looked for buyers, and Pleasance and Proudfoot put together a management buyout. Amazing Computing interviewed Pleasance on 26 July 1994 and put him on its September cover. He told the magazine that his bid was “the only way that the Amiga product will survive”, that his business plan was based on British sales alone, and that new Amigas would be built under contract in Britain, at the old Scottish factory. He planned to rebuild an engineering team of 60 to 65 people.

Asked whether Commodore had failed by neglecting the American market, he disagreed:

No, I don’t share that view, and the reason that I don’t share that view is for many years now 85% of Commodore’s business has come out of Europe. We do not have the dependency on America that everybody believes we should have.

Launching the brand in America, he said, would cost $25 million for “a very mediocre campaign to only twenty cities”. He put the collapse down to “total mismanagement of the company’s resources”, with money spent on PCs and “46 engineers in West Chester all working on PC products. It was obscene.” And he blamed one man. In his account the company had been “messed up big time by a president of the company who had no understanding of the market”, and Mehdi Ali had been “this company’s best sales prevention officer”. Pleasance said that Ali had also talked the liquidators out of allowing an earlier management bid. He promised a different approach: “unlike the previous corporation, we will endeavor to sublicense and cooperate with anybody who wants to develop and manufacture things that work for and with Amiga products.” When the interviewer asked, “How much of this do you want on-the-record?”, Pleasance replied, “You can put all of it on the record.”

He said the same a year later to Amiga Computing. He had worked with Ali for two years in America. Of Ali’s rise to the top he said, “perhaps I was gullible, but he talked a good story.” Subsidiary managers had put forward suggestions, he said, “but Ali seemed to ignore them”, and he rejected the idea that Ali was a scapegoat: “There’s no doubt in my mind that he is the person who is responsible.” Amiga Computing contacted Ali to give him a chance to reply; he asked for its questions to be sent through Commodore, and did not answer them.

The sale dragged on for months. In February 1995 Amazing Computing’s rumour column reported that the liquidator, Franklyn Wilson, was meeting Pleasance and Alex Amor of Creative Equipment International, the American distributor, as the two finalists. When the auction finally took place in New York on 20 April 1995, Pleasance and Proudfoot dropped out before the bidding began. “We can’t compete with Escom and Dell,” Pleasance told Amiga Computing. “We are going to try to settle with whoever wins.” Amiga Format’s report doubted that the British team had ever had solid enough financing to compete. The German PC maker Escom won with $10 million, and it did not buy Commodore UK.

After Commodore

By the end of 1995 Pleasance had turned to music. With two partners, Richard Knox and Ed Fermor, he set up Tangent Music Design, a recording studio built around Amiga 4000s, and recorded a 14-track album, Everybody’s Girlfriend, named after the Spanish meaning of “amiga”. The songs were his own and he played flamenco guitar on one track. “All the tracks are inspired by the Amiga in one way or the other,” he told Amiga Computing. “A song called ‘I don’t want to lose you’ says it all, I think.” The magazine noted that he already had a background in music, including second place on the Australian Opportunity Knocks.

In 2017 he raised money on Kickstarter for a book about his time at the company, and Commodore: The Inside Story was published the following year. Its account runs from his arrival in 1983 to August 1995, when Commodore UK stopped trading.

Sources

AmigaWorld vol. 8 no. 8, August 1992: Pleasance hired as vice president of consumer sales in the US; his previous post at Commodore Electronics Limited, Switzerland, and its 27 countries.
Amiga Computing issue 61, June 1993: Kelly Sumner’s resignation and move to Gametek; two senior executives as joint general managers. Amiga Format issue 47, June 1993: Sumner’s resignation; Pleasance and Colin Proudfoot taking over.
CU Amiga, June 1993, p. 110: interview with Pleasance (ten years at Commodore; “vapourware”).
The One issue 60, September 1993: the CD32 launch at the Science Museum.
Amiga Format issue 55, January 1994: “Now with four games!” (the new bundle, £299.99, the quotation on the first bundle, the sales forecasts, the A1200 order); his readers’ letters column.
Amiga Computing issue 70, February 1994: 75,000 CD32 sales by the end of 1993.
Amiga Power issue 35, March 1994: Dangerous Streets, 3%. Issue 37, May 1994: Microcosm and The Chaos Engine added to the bundle.
Amazing Computing vol. 9 no. 7, July 1994, p. 55: the liquidation announcement of 29 April 1994.
Amazing Computing vol. 9 no. 9, September 1994, cover and pp. 78 and 80: interview with Pleasance, 26 July 1994 (eleven years at Commodore; “I launched the Amiga in this country”; the 85% figure; ten months in America; mismanagement; Mehdi Ali; the earlier bid; manufacturing in Britain and Scotland; the engineering team; “How much of this do you want on-the-record?”).
Amazing Computing vol. 10 no. 2, February 1995: The Bandito’s column on Franklyn Wilson, Pleasance and Alex Amor.
Amiga Computing issue 87, June 1995: feature on Commodore’s collapse (Pleasance on Mehdi Ali; Ali’s refusal to answer questions).
Amiga Format issue 72, June 1995, pp. 12–18: the auction of 20 April 1995 (Pleasance and Proudfoot withdraw; Escom’s $10 million; doubts about the British team’s financing).
Amiga Computing issue 88, July 1995: the auction (“We can’t compete with Escom and Dell”).
Amiga Computing, Christmas 1995: “Pleasance pays tribute” (Tangent Music Design; Everybody’s Girlfriend; Opportunity Knocks; Escom did not buy Commodore UK).
Amiga Format issue 79, Christmas 1995: Tangent Music Design. Amiga Shopper issue 58, January 1996: interview with Pleasance, Richard Knox and Ed Fermor.
“Commodore Inside Story by David John Pleasance”, Indie Retro News, 12 March 2017 (web, secondary): the Kickstarter campaign and the period the book covers. https://www.indieretronews.com/2017/03/commodore-inside-story-by-david-john.html
“Commodore The Inside Story”, Commodore News, 28 September 2018 (web, secondary): the published book. https://commodore-news.com/news/item/6558/en