Facit
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the postage stamp catalog, see Facit catalog.
Facit (Facit AB) was an industrial corporation and manufacturer of office products. It was based in Åtvidaberg, Sweden, and founded in 1922 as AB Åtvidabergs Industrier. Facit AB, a manufacturer of mechanical calculators, was incorporated into the corporation the same year.
By the early 1960s the subsidiary Facit had come to dominate the business of the corporation, and in 1965 it changed its name to Facit AB. At that time, the corporation had a total of 8,000 employees with subsidiaries in over 100 countries.
In 1970, the company had reached the peak of its growth, with more than 14,000 employees worldwide. In 1971, modern Japanese-made calculators was introduced to the market, instantly making the mechanical calculators manufactured by Facit obsolete. As a result, Facit went out of business virtually over-night. The general view on this failure is that Facit met its demise as a result of refusing to acknowledge the superiority of modern calculators, as well as an unwillingness to adapt and change accordingly, to meet the new demands from the market.
Facit was sold to Electrolux in 1973. In 1983 it was again sold to Ericsson, whereby an attempt to manufacture microcomputers was initiated. During 4 years, the Facit home computer became popular in Sweden. It offered some innovative solutions with a programming language resembling BASIC. However, as this venture didn't turn out to be a profitable one, it was terminated in 1988.
The company was subsequently divided between foreign owners. The remainder of the corporation known as Facit AB was finally terminated in 1998.
