THIS LOOKS LIKE BIG NEWS!!!!!
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London
1.40 a.m.
1st April, 1999
Presse Financiere Syndicale, Paris.
COMPAQ GRABS LEAD IN $12 BILLION D.I.Y. MARKET
Strategic Alliances
Reported by
Michaelo Dell'Tauro
London/Frankfurt/Milan
Eckhard Pfeiffer, CEO of COMPAQ, the world's No. 2 computer-maker, released an after-market statement yesterday, to the effect that COMPAQ's new initiative in the D.I.Y (Do It Yourself) market, which is conservatively valued at $12 billion per annum in the UK, and as much as $40 billion in the US, will catapult COMPAQ's revenues to $70 Billion by 2001.
Citing recent moves to house its major Distributors in its Houston manufacturing headquarters, where they will work alongside COMPAQ to assemble their own inventory of PC's, thereby eliminating the need for COMPAQ to maintain inventory - Pfeiffer said: "We must sell to the customer where and how the customer wants to buy. COMPAQ is not in the inventory business". He went on to say that the natural extension of this philosophy was "to let the customer build their own PC's, with COMPAQ parts, COMPAQ guidance and services and, eventually, stamped with the COMPAQ/DIY symbol". He noted that the D.I.Y. industry had become something of a sociological movement, a modern cottage industry. "This strategic step cuts the cost of an average PC by 75%. Let your customer build his own PC and he will be your customer for life". At first, new COMPAQ D.I.Y. outlets will be confined to large out-of-town shopping malls, but eventually, they will be found in local, all-purpose facilities such as gas stations. Primary and elementary schools will be recruited to the program. "We should look forward to the time when every American child has built his own computer before the age of eleven years, or at least, knows how to do it".
In a related move, COMPAQ has entered into a 5-year pact with the Home Office in the United Kingdom and the Department of Corrections in Texas, whereby high-end servers and storage systems will be built by inmates. It is estimated that this program will improve COMPAQ's gross margins by 9%, while at the same time providing inmates with an opportunity, when they have served their sentence, to join COMPAQ's corp of 27,000 consultants. ""It might scare a few folks now", said Dr. Sigmund Tanhhauser, who represents the State of Texas in the establishment of the program, "but the major corporations and organisations who use the COMPAQ high-end servers in such places as stock exchanges, banks, military establishments, will have no qualms about calling in some of these convicted murders, rapists and armed robbers when they need them to maintain the multi-million dollar systems upon which they rely."
Asked why he had made the announcement when he had. Pffeiffer said, "Because it is traditional to make such announcement on 1st April, every year, before noon". |
