DAK Industries

Founding

DAK Industries was founded in 1966 and during the 1980s became a mail-order electronics firm based in Canoga Park, Los Angeles, California. A gadget enthusiast, Kaplan founded his business while studying psychology at UCLA. On the side, he sold reel-to-reel tapes and installed stereos.

Kaplan spent five years at UCLA, but never earned a degree, then went into business full-time, setting up shop in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, to sell recording tapes. The Los Angeles Times once called DAK "the L.L.Bean of consumer electronics", adding though that Kaplan was reclusive and rarely granted interviews, and refused to be photographed.

1980s

Before the Internet, companies like DAK relied on catalogs and print ads to generate sales and incurred high costs for printing and mailing. A large enterprise would have to create a great many catalogs to get sufficient sales. In 1985, Kaplan was involved in a lawsuit with his former printer, and court records show that he had ordered a run of 3.8 million catalogs.

By the late 1980s, DAK was a $120 million per year business with around 400 full-time workers. It was selling everything from radar detectors and stereo speakers to security lighting systems, hand-held photocopiers, and televisions with two-inch screens.

Kaplan's 1⁄4-inch-thick (6.4 mm) DAK catalogue was mailed across the United States and Canada, and its hallmark was the unusual first-person style of the ads, each with Kaplan's byline and with up to 1,400 words of text per page.

DAK was responsible for bringing a number of electronic gadgets previously unknown or little known in the US market to the public's attention; among these included an early bread making machine, and an early laptop computer, the Epson PX-8 Geneva.