A Canadian, who enjoyed driving his motorcycle up to his cottage on Lake Chemong near Buckhorn Lake on the Kawartha Lakes, along with an unforgettable trip across the USA on his motorcycle
Karl Phillips worked at Commerce Optimation Services Limited, 50% owned by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce ( CIBC ) which started the computer service bureau in 1970 where Karl was in charge of the computor department as a computer systems analyst / programer / operator, located in Don Mills.
The company did computer servicing work for General Motors, CIBC, Union Carbide, Gulf Oil, plus monthly billing for all Sunoco credit card holders across Canada and was able to turn a profit in less than 2 years, something unheard of back then in the computer service industry.
After in 1974, Karl started his own company designing products, for example designing original beer plaques made out of solid red-oak wood for all the 3 major Breweries in Canada, plus manufacturing over 1,000 stained glass lamps per week by using unique jigs all developed solely by Karl.
Karl hired Tony Galati (the artistic craftsman who hand carved the famous Carlsberg Wagon) to wood carve every one of Karl's beer plaques out of solid red-oak wood.
Since all the design work was done by Karl, and all costs of Karl's beer plaques were all paid by Karl, plus in order to ensure that the highest quality of the beer plaques representing their beer brand would be maintained, all 3 major Breweries agreed to give Karl the exclusive rights to his beer plaques.
Soon after, Karl had his beer plaques reproduced out of polyurethane so that everyone could enjoy them. Karl solely marketed his items to every major department store chain across Canada, plus to a number of chain stores in the USA.
At one time, Karl had well over 100 workers manufacturing his Tiffany style lamps including his beer plaques just in Canada. Karl had both his Beer Plaques as well as his Tiffany Style Lamps featured in Consumers Distributing Catalogue right across Canada, Shop-Rite's Catalogue in Ontario, and Cardinal Catalogue in Quebec.
Other solid accounts at the time that he sold his unique items to right across Canada were The Bay, Eaton's, Sears, Canadian Tire, Woolco, Zellers, K-Mart, and Robinson's Stores that were located around Oakville and the Golden Horseshoe Region.
Within a few years in 1978, Karl Phillips sold his profitable business but unfortunately due to the new owner's poor management (or such), the new owners had went personnally bankrupt. Karl later found out that they had gone personally bankrupt a number of other times, just a few years prior with other businesses!
In 2003, Karl was recruited at that time by a small unheard of start-up IT Company by the name of Google, located in Mountain View California.
As an employee of Google, Karl was responsible for a number of tasks, including as a systems analyst with a direct line to Google's head programmer to forward ideas which would later help improve Google's presence on the internet.
Karl Phillips currently lives just outside Toronto, Ontario.
