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Pretty soon, they had a huge business on their hands, complete with a Queen Street store-front. There was even talk of them floating their company on the sharemarket.

Then, almost overnight, it all collapsed and the Exzel brand was history.

Some time later, there was a little company called PC General.

They made cheap PCs and sold them via mail order. Gradually their sales grew until they began to take out big ads and business went through the roof.

Then, almost overnight, it all collapsed and the PC General brand was history.

Some time later there was a company called PC Direct. It started assembling PC boxes and selling them from a little store in Ponsonby, Auckland.

Pretty soon, sales went through the roof and they attracted the attention of Gateway, a huge American PC vendor. Gateway bought them out and then, almost overnight, they were gone. Cost-cutting on the part of Gateway saw the extinction of yet another large local assembler.

And now we have The PC Company which, after modest beginnings in Hamilton, grew and grew, until it had a nationwide chain of retail outlets.

Almost overnight, it's shut all those retail outlets and is in the process of restructuring.

Colin Brown is a savvy businessman and if anyone can pull off this restructuring, I know he can.

I'm betting that those retail outlets will remain closed and that The PC Company will return to its roots as an efficient importer and assembler of PCs -- without the expense of retailing, except perhaps in Hamilton.

But have you noticed the trend here?

New Zealand is a very small market by world standards and it appears as if many local assemblers forget this.

What's more, the world has become a much smaller place these days so geographical borders no longer protect local suppliers from competition.

For example, Australian-based Dell Computers appear to be doing a pretty respectable job of grabbing a good share of the local market. They spend big on advertising and have a slick website that lets people either choose from a range of preconfigured systems or design their own.

Then there's the effect that stores like Harvey Norman and Noel Leeming have had on the retail PC marketplace. Many neophyte PC purchasers find it very easy to just go to a big "friendly" appliance store and stick an HP or Compaq system on hire-purchase. Dedicated computer stores are by comparison, often very scary places where people speak "geek" and financing options might not be as flexible.

But this cycle of boom and bust hasn't hit all local PC assemblers. There are still quite a few (including the sponsor of the Aardvark PVR project) who seem to have done extremely well by acknowledging the limitations of the local market.

I'm betting that companies with their eye on the ball will survive indefinitely by being realistic about sales volumes and focusing on the niche areas where they can offer very real benefits over a 16-year-old appliance store "retail assistant" or some tele-op on the end of an 0800 line.

The PC assembly industry, it would appear, is a perfect example of Darwinism.

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