Dell picks up big deals, lowers prices (Sara Lee, FTD)
From Austin American-Statesman, Saturday, October 31, page G2
Sara Lee, FTD to use Round Rock company's equipment
by Jerry Mahoney, Austin American-Statesman
Round Rock-on a recent trip to Chicago to speak to a group of business executives about computers and the Internet, Michael Dell took time out for another part of his job: He met with customers.
The 33-year-old chief executive of Dell Computer Corp. who promotes the Internet as an effective way to expand business in virtually every speech he gives, returned to Austin with big orders from Sara Lee Corp. and FTD Inc.
Sara Lee, the Chicago based food and personal products concern, said it will buy $30 million in hardware from Dell in each of the next two years.
The consumer-goods company, whose global sales last year exceeded $20 billion, said the standardization on Dell equipment will help cut costs as it restructures operations.
In a deal nearly as big, Michael Dell and FTD Inc. signed an agreement in principal under which members of the florist group would buy more than 20,000 Dell OptiPlex Gx1 desktops, workstations and servers over the next two years.
Founded in 1910, the FTD network links 20,000 florists in the United States and Canada.
Dell will install the group's Mercury Wings hardware and software, named for the widely recognized FTD logo. The package will allow florists to use the Internet for such tasks as ordering supplies while receiving orders from customers.
Wang Global, one of Dell's service partners, is expected to install the systems and train the florists to use them.
The contracts with Sara Lee and FTD have been under discussion for months.
Dell, which shipped an estimated 1.27 million computers in the third quarter, announces only a fraction of the contracts it signs with customers. Press releases on the deals and on a recent price cut may signal a more aggressive publicity policy, as Dell closes in n Compaq Computer corp. for U.S. and worldwide sales. Dell said it was passing along declining prices for components and lowering prices up to 13 percent on its Dimensions PCs for consumers and small businesses.
A Dimension V350 with a 350 megahertz Pentium II and 32-megabyte hard drive dropped $200 to $1,314. A Dimension XPS R450 with a 450-megahertz Pentium II and 128 megabytes of hard drive storage dropped $281 to $2,310.
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