Simon Chu saved Polychrome

Everyone knows Simon Chu but not everyone knows what contributions he made to Polychrome as we grew.        He was just a starting quality control chemist after his military service when one day a lot of plates came back due to poor performance almost bankrupting the company.        As you may know the plate then had a very fragile diazo material without protective coating and without protective technology it was natural that it failed in summer heat and humidity.        The leading plate supplier 3M we learned later already had technology to avoid premature aging of diazo.      Polychrome did not know then and did not have such a technology.       Simon quickly came up with a technology later called V coating which stabilized the plate and Polychrome went on to become one of the leading plate suppliers.        The plate technology moved forward a few years later and in late 1960's, he and Gene Golda incorporated this V coating and diazo into a single compound we then called Fotomer to be the basis of all the so-called "subtractive" plate.         The more stable Fotomer was solvent coated on a plate rather than the former "additive" plate coated from water solution.      The unexpected side benefit of using solvent was the increase in production speed and productivity to help transform production lines to  modern ones.

When I arrived Polychrome, Mr. Halpern said "you ought meet Simon but he is not here."     He was in Lebanon to promote plates made in Germany.        In early days of Osterode production, there were numbers of start up technical problems and he was called in to lend his experienced hand in troubleshooting.       Lebanon visit apparently was a simple extension of his support to Osterode production to start sales there.      

He was known to give thorough consideration to all the background, possibility and consequence before giving his final decision but once the decision was made it was often bold and far reaching.    This along with his technical contribution must have been the basis of his being elected as the board member of the company while he was still in his mid 30.

He carefully nurtured our relationship with the licensee, Fuji Photo Film.       He promoted the idea of us being the eyes for Fuji to the world while benefiting production technology in which Fuji excelled.      Despite of some critics saying that we were helping future competitor, he and Bill Salesman  managed to convince Fuji to renew licensing agreement for the second time.          The renewed agreement was significant in  not only bringing continued yearly  licensing revenue but also some key technologies we later benefited greatly.    

The successful licensing to Fuji was followed by new licensing agreement to a Chinese government sponsored company in mid 1980 and then a company in India both of which were started and followed by him carefully.          We were not a big company but was the only one   very internationally advanced  company with presence in US, Europe, Japan, China and India.

He has served Polychrome for over 40 years till 1998 and continued to consult KPG on licensing matters and now enjoys having and seeing his children and grandchildren nearby.