Rescue at cc:

Bruce Holmes had left his company for dead. Then a band of fanatical customers rushed to the Internet to save its life.

>>> Haven has reached a point where we cannot pay our bills. I'm personally about $100,000 in debt and have no other sources for borrowing. ... We are simply shutting down." --Bruce Holmes, Haven Corp.

With the click of a mouse, Bruce Holmes sent his software company's obituary hurtling over the Internet toward 400 longtime customers. Hours earlier he had composed the announcement (word by excruciating word), printed a copy, and carried it out into the main section of Haven's Evanston, Ill., office. After instructing his staff to switch the technical-support line to voice mail, Holmes had led everyone into the conference room, and there his composure had fled. Handing the paper to technical-support specialist Mary Kuhn, Haven's president had sat in silence, head bowed, while she read aloud the message. "People were shocked and stunned," recalls Kuhn.

They probably shouldn't have been. Haven Corp., whose products served the mail-order industry, had a history of troubles. Castle, a Windows version of the company's signature program, Wizard, was years late to market, setting off an erosion in Haven's customer base and support revenues. Compounding the problem, the company's cash woes had forced it in the fall of 1999 to sell 60 customers a beta release still itchy with bugs. And Haven was hurting for programmers, which was not surprising given Holmes's inability to offer competitive salaries.

And yet... and yet...

And yet despite its woes, Haven was beloved. Beloved by its eight employees, who hung on out of fierce loyalty to Holmes and to Wizard. And beloved by its customers, who gratefully entrusted their companies -- chiefly small catalog marketers -- to a product so skillfully designed that many considered a tech-support contract superfluous. Service, too, was 24 karat, with Holmes himself setting the standard. And the founder was more than just a voice on a phone line. Customers knew him personally from the popular conferences and training workshops that his company had once sponsored.

Customers raved about Haven, and Holmes returned their regard, leavened with a profound sense of responsibility. That made his farewell all the harder.

>>> "To those of you who have put your faith in this company and will now be left high and dry, you have my most deeply felt apology. I speak for everyone here when I say that we have counted many of you as friends, and to think that we are letting you down is a bitter pill."

Holmes pronounced Haven's passing to his customers at 5:57 p.m. on August 15, 2000. The next morning he flew to Seattle for a wedding that he was committed to attending. But while Holmes was gone, Haven's fate rapidly came unsealed. The founder's E-mail triggered a response among customers at once so passionate and so pragmatic that it ultimately would resurrect the business -- albeit in a whole new form. Think It's a Wonderful Life, only with the Internet, rather than an angel, as the deus ex machina.

>>> "I am very sorry to hear this news. Of course, it's not good for our business, but the hardship we will face is nothing compared to what you must be going through now. It takes great courage to build a company on faith and sell that faith to a community of people that love your product." --Victor Toso, Nada-Chair

Unlike Jimmy Stewart, Holmes was treated to no divinely engineered glimpses of a Haven-less world. He wasn't even around to read the volleys of E-mail fired off by Wizard users in the first two days after he lobbed his bombshell. In that period dozens of Haven customers used the "cc:" list on Holmes's original message to reach out across the Internet both to Holmes and to one another. The newly bereaved sought strategic and technical advice from their peers while extolling the company in ways that Holmes would surely have found gratifying.

Many of the first writers asked anxiously for news of Holmes, who had said nothing about his immediate plans, was clearly in poor spirits, and failed to respond to phone calls or E-mail messages.

>>> "Just writing that letter and shutting the door had to be a wrenching experience. He is probably envisioning people with drums and torches scouring Evanston looking for him." --Charley Kehoe Tonquish, Creek Fire Co.

Others balanced present sorrow with recollections of palmier days.

>>> "On December 31, 1999, at 6 p.m., we were closing out the year and hit a bug. We called Haven tech support and got...Bruce at home! That is dedication to a product." --Paul Richardson, Russian Life magazine

Some mused about what might have gone wrong.

>>> "To my way of thinking, Bruce's major mistake over the years was not charging enough. We all got a huge bargain. Now we're paying for it." --Dick Monahan, PhysicianEd

 1 | 2 | 3 | 4  NEXT