WorldPoint's furniture goes on auction block

By John Duchemin
Advertiser Staff Writer

At WorldPoint, everything's for sale today. Everything, that is, except for the full-size Yoda dolls.

But if you want cut-rate, used flat-screen monitors, wall-mounted plasma TV screens or plastic tables from Costco, you could probably do worse than today's WorldPoint auction.

WorldPoint is getting rid of all its excess equipment, which is a lot, considering the Honolulu-based online translation company went from more than 100 employees in January to exactly one paid employee in July.

That one employee is virtually all that is left of WorldPoint, which this year has fallen through the bomb-bay doors of the once-high-flying dot-com community. The firm, founded by Honolulu doctor Robert Peterson and academic Larry Cross, is perhaps the most notorious local casualty of the dot.com industry crash.

With the auction, starting at 9 a.m. in the penthouse of 1132 Bishop St., the furniture-rich, revenue-poor company is trying to raise money to survive through what can charitably be called a rough spot. It also needs spare cash to feed a hungry creditor, the state of Hawai'i, which in June sued WorldPoint over a five-year overdue loan of $800,000 plus interest. The fate of several investors' mortgaged homes rides on the outcome of the case.

With all the problems out there, WorldPoint President (and sole surviving employee) Massimo Fuchs grasps the macabre humor in his company's pending loss of furnishings: "Why do I need 100 chairs if I only have one employee to sit in them?"

Six months ago, WorldPoint had big-time Web site translation contracts with such companies as Nike, Mitsui, IBM and Kodak, which wanted to "globalize" themselves on the multilingual Internet.

But those companies pulled back as the economy worsened. As it lost contracts, WorldPoint got rid of its branch offices in Switzerland, Dallas, Hong Kong and San Francisco and laid off all of its employees, except for its company president.

Now all that's left is Fuchs, chairman Cross (a former University of Hawai'i associate dean), a few computers and an underused office.

And the Yoda dolls. Fuchs has three of the signed George Lucas collectors' items, bought on eBay for about $500 each. He says they're not for sale.

Yoda was intended to represent WorldPoint. According to Fuchs, the wide-eared, Muppet-voiced hermit Yoda is the Force behind C-3P0, the uptight droid who could speak thousands of languages. (Former WorldPoint manager Jocelyn Gaw Gonzalo earlier said the company couldn't find a C-3PO figure, so it settled on Yoda.)

The Star Wars imagery still applies. WorldPoint now resembles an aged Yoda roaming a lonely planet of a mothballed office, which cost $1.5 million to furnish.

Oohs and ahs accompanied WorldPoint's move last year from closetlike offices in the Manoa Innovation Center to a penthouse skyscraper suite in BancWest Chairman Walter Dods' former office (that's where the waterfall came from). Eyebrows raised when WorldPoint leased a two-story loft for 10-plus years in downtown San Francisco for its Bay Area operations. After the February layoffs, that office had two employees, until they, too, lost their jobs.

Fuchs, through it all, has objected to the frequent portrayals of WorldPoint as a free-spending paragon of Internet excess. He said the company needed to spend money to raise money, because venture investors avoided profits like they were the Black Death, at least until the market crashed. Hence the research and development department, which produced no revenue but ate up more than a quarter of the payroll. And the dozen-plus $15,000 plasma TVs, which hung on the office walls like picture frames and, Fuchs said, were part of WorldPoint's "advertising budget."

And a Sharper Image massage chair, five 10-foot waterfalls, two Indich collection Hawaiian print carpets, and a koa desk.

Regarding the office furniture, Fuchs said he was trying to make employees happy in a cost-effective way. He said many of the decorations also came with the office.

"It's amazing the psychological effect things have," said the Swiss entrepreneur. "If you buy a $40 folding table from Costco and put a flat-screen monitor on it, everyone forgets about the table and focuses on the monitor. The whole package costs less than modular furniture, and yet I'm accused of being lavish."

Fuchs is now running WorldPoint as a "cyberspace company," using a network of independent contractors to do online translations. For now, the company is more "space" than "cyber" — revenues are less than $5,000 per month, down from $100,000 per month previously.

As for the auction, Fuchs said about 10 local technology companies have toured the WorldPoint offices to look at equipment. The goods for sale are worth about $500,000, Fuchs said.

The state plans to take a cut of the proceeds. Deputy Attorney General Myra Kaichi said the state approves of the sale because it indicates WorldPoint is playing ball. "So far," said Kaichi, "they've been very professional and cooperative."