Brother In The 90sINNOVATIVE PRODUCT DEFINES BROTHER AND Fuels Our Biggest Growthof the busiest kitchen and cook. You could look P-TOUCHup recipes or enter your own…and even create Our First Multi-Million Dollar a shopping list for a particular recipe or adjust TV Campaign Pays Off Big – quantities for larger or smaller groups. It was as P-touch Labelers on CNNeasy as pressing a button.Digital Cookbook Stamp Creator CheckWriterIn 1991, cable was not considered an integral Entering the Music Industry…with a Drivepart of a broadcast media buy; network was Always looking for opportunities to leverage where conventional wisdom said TV dollars existing technologies, Brother entered the worked best. But Brother gambled on a relatively electronic music arena with the introduction of its FAX new cable channel called CNN. The company’s MIDI-disk recorder. MIDI, which stands for Musical thinking was that if America went to war with “We’d Like to Make One Thing Perfectly Flat”Instrument Digital Interface, is the “universal Iraq (as President George Bush threatened to Brother introduces the company’s ThermaPlus paper, language” of electronic music. A musician can do), the country would be glued to CNN thanks with its ACS (Anti-Curl System) technology that control one or more MIDI-compatible devices to its ‘round-the-clock’ news format. While other produced fat faxes, resistant to fading. from another by simply connecting them via a marketers scrambled to take advantage of CNN’s specialized cable. Brother utilized disk drives IntelliFax 600 – Different to Be Better – 1992soaring rating, Brother’s P-touch “Therapy” spot it had developed for its highly successful word was putting the brand on the map – and in the The frst fax to offer an auto cutter and feeder for processor line as the basis for its MIDI recorder. minds of American consumers. an unprecedented $399, the IntelliFax 600 Series Leaving Our Stamp on the Customermade a statement to the marketplace that Brother was OTHER PRODUCTS seriously committed to both category and customer. Another unique Brother product was the Stamp GeoBook, the Notebook Computer with It incorporated the company’s exclusive ACS and Creator. Originally introduced in 1995, this an Emphasis on FunctionalityThermaPlus technologies, which made it the frst distant cousin of the P-touch Electronic Labeling thermal fax machine that was a real alternative to System debuted at VisionQuest and made the Thanks to operating systems like Linux, today’s the more expensive plain paper models of that time. phrase “rubber stamps while you wait” a reality. computer users realize there are alternatives to ®The Stamp Creator Pro, which launched in 1999, Windows . Unfortunately, that certainly wasn’t the The IntelliFax 900 – Introduced in 1994is still being used in many copy and quick-print case when the Brother GeoBook was introduced The $399 IntelliFax 900, which used thermal transfer service centers.in the mid-‘90s. Because it used a Windows-like printing, brought plain paper faxing to the masses. operating system called GEOS, and contained an Brother CheckWriter, for Error-Free Checksentire offce suite of built-in software, it enabled This electronic checkbook enabled even the TYPEWRITERSusers to enjoy PC-level productivity for a fraction smallest business to print checks that looked like of the cost of a comparably equipped One Million Typewriters a Year – All Y2K Complianta million bucks. In addition to printing checks, the Windows system.CheckWriter kept an automatic balance, printed The Brother Kitchen Assistant, accurate statements, and reconciled two separate the Digital “Cookbook”accounts. It had a typewriter-style keyboard, a 20-character by two-line display, a 600-transaction Brother developed what could be considered the memory and security PIN.frst kitchen “PDA.” Elegantly styled, the Kitchen Assistant was designed to withstand the demands 39 40