The RoboCut Company

The RoboCut Company was founded in 1984 by Alfred, Ph.D., EE, and former Research and Development Engineer with Hewlett Packard for 14 years, author of several patents and numerous published technical articles.

Alfred came to Fort Collins in 1977 as a political refugee after defecting from Ceausescu's Romania in a suspenseful Black Sea escape.

Black Sea Escape

For freedom Alfred wanted to escape Communist Romania. He designed and executed his escape recipe: Compress into a beach toy an inflatable raft, a stick, a cloth, a little food and water, rocks for neutral buoyancy. Walk with it across the guarded beach, snorkel in the water. When hidden in large waves, swim underwater toward international waters until nightfall. Surface in the dark, untangle the bundle, drop the rocks, blow up the raft. This was unexpectedly tricky: using your breath to inflate a raft works contrary to staying alive in large waves. On the spot the recipe was amended with "process large amounts of salt water" meaning swallow, inhale, cough-it-up, throw-it-up. and paddled the rest of the 20 kilometers to the international waters by daylight. After a close brush with a Romanian military gunboat and an encounter with a Russian cruise-boat that morning, Alfred faced a 7 days and nights of harrowing, hard paddling journey.

The sea sometimes mountains of water sometimes a still junkyard of discarded crates. Huge dolphins decided to use the raft as a toy bumping it back and forth. After several days' Alfred began to drift in an out of consciousness. He was not sure were he was or if he would live to see freedom.

The cold, the uncontrollable shivering was the worst enemy now. It seemed so real, if he would just walk on the path the moon was shining on the water he would easily get to the shore.. he had to slap his face hard to get out of delirium.

... More of Alfred's long journey to America will be added. Please visit again sometime.

In 1979 and 1980, a pet peeve became his inability to get the same haircut consistently even from a hairstylist with impressive achievements and obvious talent.

At the time, HP had a liberal policy of offering the company shops for tinkering after hours. Soon, a haircutter was taking shape alongside computer related research.

A history of RoboCut:

..1981: first RoboCut prototype

..1982 The first "volunteer" (roommate) gets a haircut.

..1983 RoboCut will never sell, give up!

..1984: the first RoboCut patent is submitted

..1984: pilot run is on sale

..1984: RoboCut Starts advertising in Popular Science and Popular Science Magazine.

..1986: the Flowbee® founder buys a RoboCut form magazine ad.

..1986: The Flowbee® founder submits Patent for Flowbee®.

..1986: The RoboCut Patent is granted.

..1987: Flowbee® is Patent is granted and introduced.

..1988:RoboCut works to develop a improved battery powered RoboCut for NASA.

..1988: First RoboCut DeLuxe starts selling

..1988: RoboCut 15min Infomercial

..1989: Flowbee® 30 min Infomercial starts

..1990: RoboCut 30 min Infomercial starts

..1992, the European and United Kingdom RobCuts start shipping

..1993: Wal*Mart starts regional testing of RoboCut sales

..1994: first exports to Japan, Japanese Ministry approval is secured

..1994: Wal*Mart starts national distribution of RoboCut

..1995: haircut.com is registered, first sales on the Internet

..1996: shares of RoboCut start being purchased by investors

..1997: HairLine starts selling

..1997: RoboCut discontinues Wal*Mart distribution, focus on Internet sales

..1998, Mitsubishi joins distribution of RoboCut in Japan

..1999: Models R28 and R28DL start shipping. Our best year to date.

Flowbee® is a registered trademark of Flowbee International, which is not affiliated with RoboCut, Inc. RoboCut, Inc. is neither a franchisee nor part of the authorized sales force of Flowbee International
. RoboCut, Inc. is merely an online retailer of the Flowbee product.