What a difference a year makes

New vision: Morrison’s plan for a more efficient global company includes relocating its offices to key European and Asian cities and the US.

So what do you want to know?" says a shattered Jim Morrison. "I want to know what's going on," I say honestly. "Things needs to be cleared up."

The last 12 months have been the toughest yet for Morrison and his five year-old business. A major supplier failure resulted in two profit warnings to the City of London where the company is listed on the Alternative Investment Market; a fortnight ago 11 people were told to immediately leave its Dubai office premises, while several other employees have lost their jobs across i-mate's global offices; a major restructuring programme designed to save US$3m a year has seen operations concentrated in the UAE, UK and US; and Morrison has announced that he expects a "marginal loss", that he adds "could have been worse", when i-mate's annual results are published in June.

According to analysts revenue for the year to March 31 is expected to be in the range of US$190m to US$200m, down on the 2006 figure when sales grew 51% to US$206m. It said this would lead to a marginal loss before taxation and a restructuring is underway which will be completed in May.

For now, however, exact figures remain "off the radar", says the Scotsman with the business in a closed period. But rather honestly, however, he tells me that if he could give himself a grade for the year that has just gone past it would be an ‘F'.

"I said to the City analysts ‘alright guys, we sat an exam and we got an ‘F', right'. You have to take it sometimes. It's like going home to your parents and saying to them I got an ‘F' and failed miserably, you're going to get hell off them for a while.

"We took a little bit of punishment. People have asked me if I thought the City was harsh with me? Just like your parents, they'd be very disappointed and say you're not going to get any presents this year, but then you say ‘I'm going to focus and go away and retake the exam, and next time I do it I'll get an A'. Happy as Larry it's all forgotten about."

So what really happened? Why all the drama? Morrison tells me that he is finally ready to break the silence.

"The whole thing's been overblown, it's a complete load of rubbish," he says. "It's quite simple, alright, we've been going for five years now and we've been growing and growing and growing. We needed to restructure and fast."

According to the overworked Scotsman, this called for some urgent action. It meant in place of stuttering suppliers came owning its own intellectual property rights as well as completely altering the company's global strategy in terms of manufacturing, marketing, software design and implementation and research and development (R&D).

"We're transforming the company into a complete manufacturing company, we are now able to expand beyond the territories where we previously had restrictions under HTC [i-mate's former product supplier]."

i-mate was hit when Taiwan-based High Tech Computer decided to concentrate on selling devices under its own name. Though it set up alternative suppliers, i-mate had serious teething problems with the new arrangements and was crippled with short supplies. The company shake-up, however, has been designed to ensure no such mistakes are repeated.

"We looked at all the people we had, had software being built in five different places which didn't make sense so we put all of that in one place which is the US, we had hardware getting developed in three places so we've put that in Dubai, and all the R&D in the UK."

All the company has done, emphasises Morrison, is "streamline" its operations, and concentrate its people in key areas so they can focus on "that part of the work rather than trying to build software and specify and build devices worldwide".

"All we've done is get everything together and become more efficient, which any company should do after a five-year period," he adds.

Morrison says the restructuring plan is now complete in Dubai and that the rest of i-mate's global operations will be fully "refurnished" sometime next month.

"Myself and the board [which also includes his financial director and three non-executive directors] have repeatedly telegraphed this message to the City and our major shareholders. They've been aware of this for the past six months, every company has to do that, especially a company that's growing fast. It's that simple."

But is it really? The bigger picture is that Morrison and some of his team have recently had to learn the harsh realities of a fast changing and often cut-throat marketplace. And among his grand plans for the future of the business people needed to be hired, but also sadly fired.

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