Zeos
| Defunct | |
| Industry | Computer hardware |
| Founded | 1981 |
| Defunct | 1995 |
| Headquarters | Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. |
|
Key people
|
Gregory E. Herrick, Founder and CEO |
| Products |
Desktops Notebooks Peripherals |
ZEOS (ZEOS International, Ltd.) was a PC manufacturer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Originally based in New Brighton, Minnesota, and founded by Gregory E. Herrick, the company incorporated in Minnesota in 1981. Prior to manufacturing PCs, the company was called NPC Electronics. NPC was a contract assembly business best known for developing a transmitter device called Radio Realty. Marketed primarily to real estate brokers, this product enabled prospective home buyers to tune in and listen to prerecorded information about a property listing while parked in front of the dwelling. Radio Realty was divested in the early 1980s as NPC started developing, manufacturing, and selling PCs under the ZEOS name. The company went public in mid-1985 by self-underwriting, and officially changed its name from NPC Electronics to ZEOS International.
The company's first PC related product was known as "PC Speeder", a device designed to increase the clock speed (and thereby the performance) of the 8086 processor. The company then began work engineering a motherboard to retrofit the soon-to-be-introduced Intel 386 processor on their existing 286 platform.
The company sold its first PC in November 1987 with its first ad in Computer Shopper. Rapid sales and growth led ZEOS to become Fortune's fastest growing public company in America in 1991. ZEOS marketed its products primarily through mail order, but also partnered with and distributed PCs to Sam's Club stores. ZEOS also had two retail outlet stores, located in Arden Hills and Golden Valley, Minnesota, where refurbished and customer-returned hardware was resold, often at substantial discounts.
Following a tradition set earlier by CP/M manufacturers like Kaypro and Morrow Designs, ZEOS bundled Lotus 1-2-3 and Ami Pro with its systems while many competitors still included only operating system software, requiring customers to purchase applications separately and elsewhere. This move eventually forced ZEOS' rivals such as Dell and Gateway 2000 to also bundle software with their systems.
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