"There's this joke in which a three-year-old little girl comes to her father holding a floppy disk in her hand. "Īnd in the end he seems to have a genuine affection for floppy disk technology. There's also medical equipment, which requires floppy disks to get the information in and out of medical devices. "Probably half of the air fleet in the world today is more than 20 years old and still uses floppy disks in some of the avionics. The sheer volume of floppy disks we get in has really surprised me, it's sometimes a 1,000 disks a day."īut he also estimates its use is more widespread than we realize. We give people the opportunity to send us floppy disks and we recycle them, rather than put them into a landfill. Another thing that happened organically was the start of our floppy disk recycling service. In the interview Perkins reveals he has around half a million floppy disks in stock - 3.5-inch, 5.25-inch, 8-inch, "and some rather rare diskettes. I ended up with around 50,000 floppy disks and that's a good deal. Without going into specifics, he ended up with two things that he wanted: an empty garage and a sum of money. So, we went back and forth and negotiated a fair price. Will you take it?" Of course I wanted to take it off his hands. About two years ago a guy called me up and said: "My grandfather has all this floppy junk in the garage and I want it out. I made the decision to buy a large quantity, a couple of million disks, and we've basically been living off of that inventory ever since. If you look at those two curves, you see that there is a growing market share for the last man standing in the business, and that man is me. However, the number of people who provided the product went down even faster. Over time, the total number of floppy users has gone down. I stuck with it and didn't try to expand. Because I'd already bought all my equipment and inventory, I thought I'd just keep this revenue stream. Perkins: When people ask me: "Why are you into floppy disks today?" the answer is: "Because I forgot to get out of the business." Everybody else in the world looked at the future and came to the conclusion that this was a dying industry. Q: Where does this focus on floppy disks come from? Why not work with another medium.? My business, which used to be 90% CD and DVD duplication, is now 90% selling blank floppy disks. So here I am, a small company with a floppy disk inventory, and I find myself to be a worldwide supplier of this product. Why would you try to find me, when you could just buy disks off the shelf? But then these larger companies stopped carrying them or went out of business and people came to us. You could still go down to any office supply store, or any computer store to buy them. I only started selling blank copies organically over time. Duplicating disks in the 1980s and early 1990s was as good as printing money. Not in a million years did I think I would ever sell blank floppy disks. Perkins: I was actually in the floppy disk duplication business. All of this makes a key player in the small yet profitable contemporary floppy scene. Other services include disk transfers, a recycling program, and selling used and/or broken floppy disks to artists around the world. He is the time-honored founder of, a US-based company dedicated to the selling and recycling of floppy disks. They've just published a fascinating interview with Tom Persky, who calls himself "the last man standing in the floppy disk business." Do not let this empire strike back, be the true blade runner.Eye on Design is the official blog of the US-based professional graphic design organization AIGA. Max Out the Trichroma - Equipped with the only weapon able to defeat the Stallion threat, take the Techno-sword and plunge it into the digital hearts of your enemies.Become the boss terminator, by overcoming the deadly Crab, DragonBot, Black Rainbow, and so much more! Show Those Bosses the Bytes - Face-off against tons of totally radical and awesome bosses.With kickin’ beats that will send you back to the future. Sounds of the Retro-Grade-Times - Feel fresh waves of synth wash over you while travelling the Digital Kingdom.Explore the Mysteries of the Digital Kingdom - Venture up, down, left, and right to discover the darkest depths of the broken binary code in this never-ending story.Experience the visuals of a retro-era brought to life with hand-drawn animations. Pixel Perfectionist - The shining example of a perfectionist at work.Diehard Enemies - Face foes only imagined from your darkest fever-dreams!.
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