Special Report -- Breakaway: Focus on Small Business
Brady Bunch to Computer Wizard
BY E. THOMAS WOOD and TODD W. CARTER
Television has been good to Christopher Knight. And not just in
the way you'd think for a child star.
As Peter Brady, middle brother in "The Brady Bunch," Mr.
Knight spent much of his youth in the role of heartthrob for millions
of preteen girls. The happy-family sitcom, in which he co-starred
from 1969 until 1974, is enshrined in American lore as one of the
most popular television shows of all time, and now has an afterlife
on cable television.
But today, at 42 years old, Mr. Knight is involved with TV in a
much different way. A well-established high-tech entrepreneur, he
has brought to market a series of accessories designed to make ordinary
computers function like televisions and VCRs.
The company he co-founded, Eskape Labs Inc. of Pleasanton, Calif.,
has won critical praise for its "MyTV" line of Macintosh
video accessories. Ryan J. Faas, a Mac hardware expert reviewing
"MyTV" for About.com in November, said he was "completely
astonished" by the product: "It was as though the iMac
I was testing this on had been replaced completely by a 15-inch
television set." The product's potential to catch on with consumers
is "big, big, big," boasts Mr. Knight, with enthusiasm
reminiscent of Peter Brady himself.
The entertainment business turned out to be a worthwhile training
ground for Mr. Knight in a variety of ways. Nobody in Hollywood
expects a job for life, and so it has been no big deal to Mr. Knight
that his computer-industry career has featured six job changes between
1989 and 1998. But during that time he managed to rack up exponential
sales increases for several companies (he says he took one company
from sales of $400,000 to $4.2 million within 10 months) making
a name for himself as a marketer and not just a former TV star.
When Mr. Knight and his partners founded Eskape Labs in November
1998, they quickly encountered typical challenges. The hardware
company needed venture or "angel" capital, but it seemed
as though all Silicon Valley investment money was going into Internet
start-ups.
In an interview last October, Mr. Knight lamented, "We're beyond
the angels. We're looking for a savior."
Recently they found one. As the revived Wall Street credibility
of Apple Computer made the Mac peripherals business newly attractive,
Eskape Labs won the affections of Hauppauge Digital Inc., a publicly
traded maker of computer-video products based in Hauppauge, N.Y.
On Jan. 3, Hauppauge Digital announced its intention to acquire
Eskape Labs' assets for an undisclosed amount of cash and stock.
Mr. Knight says he will stay on in his marketing role as Hauppauge
Digital makes the Eskape Labs video products available through its
world-wide sales force. He and the sales force have their work cut
out for them.
"MyTV" and related products developed by Eskape Labs
face ample competition, as digital video camcorders and other video
products that connect to the Mac's "FireWire" port have
been extremely popular lately. But FireWire ports are fairly new
and aren't included in all Mac models. "MyTV" connects
ordinary analog camcorders to the Mac through the more widely available
USB port, sacrificing some picture quality for economy.
"It's certainly not as high in quality," Mr. Knight concedes,
"but it's much less expensive than the other options out there."
For Mr. Knight, the transition from teenage dreamboat to high-tech
mover and shaker involved a few detours and false starts. Though
he and the other Brady cast members have avoided the tragedies that
have befallen some former child stars, he had to remake himself
after he finished working on the TV series at age 16.
He had never felt committed to acting as a career -- "I was
pushed into it. It wasn't my idea," he says. And a stint as
a casting agent convinced him once and for all not to rely on the
entertainment business for a living. Though he has appeared in various
Brady Bunch revivals and other films in the past two decades, he
stopped actively looking for show-business work long ago.
Friends talked him into sinking money into their small-business
ventures when he was in his 20s -- investments that turned out to
be mistakes. Fortunately, Mr. Knight had plowed much of his Brady
earnings into Southern California real estate, which significantly
appreciated until the bust of the early 1990s when, he says, he
"got rocked pretty good."
Mr. Knight began to take an interest in computers in the late 1980s.
Though he lacked technical knowledge, he presumed: "If I did
double time for six months, I'd probably catch up with everybody
else, because it's all changing every six months."
But he deemed his past a burden. "It was a hindrance psychologically
for me at the very beginning," he explains. "I was afraid
people wouldn't take me seriously."
Quickly, though, he overcame those doubts. Today, Mr. Knight bristles
at the idea of using his old fame to open doors in business. "They
buy me because of the same reason they buy the guy in the next seat
-- because I get the job done," he says. "Not because
I am Peter Brady. If I sold that, I'd be out of a job in three months,
because it's not going to have any legs."
Mr. Wood is a writer in Nashville, Tenn. Mr. Carter
is a writer in Jenison, Mich.
|
