Escom was a major PC retailer in Germany that got big by selling PCs that were black instead of beige; it turned out that a lot of people were willing to pay a few Deutschmarks more for a box that looked cool. They acquired Amiga and Commodore trademarks and other ownership rights in 1995, but went bankrupt in 1996. Amiga Technologies was sold to VIScorp.

There are several reasons why Escom went bankrupt:
1.) the PC retailing market in Germany is pretty hard as most computers are sold by their price (and not by their quality). There are several computer firms (especially Escom's arch enemy Vobis who are concurrents on this market and the big grocery chains are selling computers, too. So you have to be as cheap as possible. Service is irrelevant.
2.) One of their biggest mistakes was a wrong interpret of the computer parts market. They bought a huge amount of parts and soon after that the prices dropped and all their competitors could buy cheaper parts and sell their computers cheaper. (Huh, computer parts are gettin cheaper, would could have known that?)
3.) Amiga. I do not think that Amiga is cursed (although this is a pretty widespread opinion). The problem is, that Amiga does not stand for computer as cheap as possible, but has a history behind it. That is not what is sold today. And the worst: Amiga does not run Windows.

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