Business is business and when the cutthroat PC industry gets a little too competitive, it can also get a little too shady. Late last year, Zalman found itself at the center of a $3 billion fraud conspiracy with parent company Moneual. While it turned out that Zalman didn’t exactly go bankrupt and did continue to honor product warranties, it looked like the PC component and accessory company was kaput. Well, more than a full year has passed and a lot has happened since that time.
As a quick refresher, Zalman itself didn’t go bankrupt, but parent company Moneual did because it was filing all sorts of false trade reports and financial statements in order to secure a whole bunch of bank loans that it shouldn’t have received. And so, the Korean courts ruled that Zalman could survive; it would just have to undergo some rather massive “restructuring.”
Seth Colaner from Tom’s Hardware had the opportunity to chat with Zalman Technical Marketing specialist Michael Park about the company and where it can go from here. When the restructuring (i.e., downsizing) first began, many workers were told to “seek employment elsewhere.” Even so, the atmosphere changed to “bustling and focused” shortly thereafter with a “fresh foundation.” Each employee is now facing a workload equivalent to what was once handled by three people.
The long and the short of it is that Zalman is still very much alive, now that they have begun to “shut down unprofitable businesses.” Moving forward, the focus will be with their core areas of coolers, chassis, PSUs and input devices. The exact finances are still hush-hush, due to the “ongoing legal case,” but Zalman is here and they’ll have several new products for us in 2016. If you want to learn more, check out the full interview and writeup on Tom’s Hardware.