Anderson Morgan: Pioneering Tassie tech firm collapses
An application has been lodged in court to formally wind up a Tasmanian company which at one point boasted four offices and secured expensive contracts in the United States.
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The director of a pioneering Tasmanian tech firm that at one point boasted four offices and secured expensive overseas contracts says a Covid tragedy and increased competition led to its collapse.
The Australian arm of global cloud-computing giant Arrow has applied to the Supreme Court of New South Wales to formally wind-up Anderson Morgan, founded in 1999 by Devonport director Raoul Anderson.
Anderson Morgan, which at one point had offices in Launceston, Ulverstone, Hobart and Brisbane, specialised in software, mobile device management, cryptocurrency and the ‘internet of things’.
Mr Anderson told the Mercury that Anderson Morgan ceased trading in September last year when he spun off its profitable managed service provider arm into a new business, Inscope IT.
The company has been paying off creditors since but that process may be expedited if Arrow’s application is successful.
Inscope IT is a separate entity unrelated to Anderson Morgan and is not the subject of Arrow’s application.
Mr Anderson said his business sustained twin blows in 2020–21.
At the start of the pandemic, Mr Anderson’s US business partner tragically died from Covid, meaning the business had to stop its North American operations. The Mercury reported in 2014 that Anderson Morgan had secured a $100m contract to install Wi-Fi internet systems in 400 sites across the US.
This coincided with a sustained period of increased competition leading to “predatory” behaviour, Mr Anderson said.
“It’s a high-volume, low-margin industry and all of a sudden the supply chain gets disrupted, then the big guys go out and take your clients. There’s a shrinking amount of stuff to sell to the same amount of people,” he said.
“You’re a service-based business in a cutthroat market. You don’t have a niche product to sell.”
Mr Anderson said Anderson Morgan’s closure has coincided with a new phase in his life.
He has become a grandfather for the first time; he’s involved in a Sydney hotel consultancy start-up Hotelr; and he is working with an “international team” on a cryptocurrency project.
“This whole thing has forced me to step back, I’ve been involved in directorships fairly heavily,” he said.
“Im still working in the space, but I’m not going to be front and centre.
“I’ve always said I wanted to take a step back.
“But it didn’t quite happen the way I wanted it to.”
The winding-up application will be heard on December 8.
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