56 October 2015 - Business View Caribbean
to what could be done with those things, I decided to
change the company’s direction completely and we
began to focus all of our energy on learning as much
as we could, educating ourselves, and learning how
to program, because when those units were delivered
there was no software available, at all. All we had was
the DOS operating system and a database application
which was known as DataFlex.”
Galt goes on to relate that how he and his company
began its transition: “We morphed the company, more
and more into technology, because we realized that
that was where our future would lie. The internet was
not known, at least not to us. But in that particular
decade we got involved in networking, and we realized
for the first time that these things could really com-
municate with each other and could do so very inex-
pensively. That charted our way forward. We started
to learn how to sell, maintain, service, and deliver
excellent support to our customers. By 1989, we had
started to sell, from the Green Market, IBM computers,
because IBM did not want to deal with us – we were
way too small for them.”
(The Green Market was the distribution network that
dealt in refurbished, used, repaired, recycled, discon-
tinued, or even new products that were still in working
condition. These early PCs were sold through brokers
and resellers, and not through the original manufac-
turers. Meanwhile, the companies that actually pro-
duced computer equipment in the late 1980s and
early 1990s, labeled this resale network, the “Grey
Market,” in order to persuade customers that they
were buying counterfeit or stolen products, or goods
in uncertain working condition, or with doubtful war-
ranties. They wanted consumers to buy new products,
