Considering the hefty start-up investment, sales grew tepidly -to about C$6.6 million during 1988 -and for a few years, Cowpland seemed the consummate fallen star. He eventually added optical diskdrives to his desktop publishing system lineup and then started marketing local area networks. Corel soonīecame a value-added reseller of computers, selling complete systems geared for desktop publishing tasks.Ĭowpland scrambled during his first few years to find a role for Corel in the marketplace. He found that it was too difficult to compete in that market with low-cost Asian manufacturers, however, and quickly shifted his strategy. His initial goal was to develop a better laser printer that could be used with personal computers. In 1985 he dumped C$7 million of his own money into a new venture, which he named Corel. Undeterred, Cowpland viewed the sale of Mitel as an opportunity to pursue the development of technology that was of greater interest to him at the time and to escape a job that had become an administrative burden. Still, both founders walked away with millions in cash. Mitel began losing money, and Cowpland and Matthews were compelled to sell the enterprise to British Telecom. When computer giant IBM tired of the delay and shopped elsewhere for the technology, Mitel was faced with plant overcapacity, cost overruns, and a C $50 million research-and-development tab. Significantly, Cowpland and Matthews fell behind schedule on the development of a state-of-the-art phone switch called the SX-2000. It was in 1984, though, that Mitel ’s diversification effort suddenly began to look like a miscalculation. Mitel posted revenues of C $343 million in 1984, in fact, by which time the company was employing more than 5,000 workers in ten plants around the world. In the early 1980s they began to chase new markets by diversifying into various digital technologies, and the pair seemed to have the Midas touch when most of those projects took off.Īll seemed to be going well until the mid-1980s. The darlings of the Canadian investment community, Cowpland and Matthews grew rich. Laboring in Cowpland ’s garage in Ottawa, the pair achieved their goal and went on to build one of Canada ’s most successful private telecommunications products companies.Ĭowpland and Matthews realized stunning success with Mitel during the 1970s and early 1980s, doubling sales of its advanced telephone switching equipment every year for ten straight years. They launched the tiny company with the hope of creating a device that could translate the pulses generated by rotary dial telephones into the tones created by touch-tone phones. In 1973 the pair left Bell to form a new venture dubbed Mitel (an abbreviation for Mike and Terry Electronics). at Carleton University while working as a research and development engineer at the respected Bell-Northern Research Ltd.Ĭowpland worked at Bell-Northern with Terry Matthews, a friend who also had emigrated from the United Kingdom. There, he earned a master ’s degree and finally a Ph.D. Cowpland was born in Sussex, England, in 1943 and received his bachelor of engineering degree from Imperial College in London. OriginsĬorel is the offspring of Michael Cowpland, a high-energy entrepreneur and Ottawa celebrity who is credited with founding two of Canada ’s most successful high-technology ventures: Corel and the earlier Mitel. Cowpland, and is seven percent owned by Novell. Corel markets its products in more than 15 different languages in approximately 70 countries. in 1996, as well as Internet applications for home and business customers. Aside from its graphics software, the company also develops and markets WordPerfect business productivity software, having purchased the WordPerfect division from Novell Inc. Corel ’s signature product is CorelDRAW, a graphics software package with sales that reached ten million copies in 1999. Public Company Incorporated: 1985 as Corel Systems Corporation Employees: 1,300 Sales: $243.05 million (1999) Stock Exchanges: NASDAQ Toronto Ticker Symbol: CORL COR NAIC: 51121 Software PublishersĬorel Corporation is one of the world ’s largest developers of business productivity, graphics, and operating systems solutions.
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