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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kemble s. matter who wrote (156490)	4/21/2000 10:09:00 AM
From: hdl	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 176387

If Dell warns next week, how much will its stock drop?

To: kemble s. matter who wrote (156490)	4/21/2000 10:55:00 AM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 176387

Kemble - RE: It's a nightmare shopping at the Radio Shack In a quick poll of 20 family and friends - admittedly not a very scientific method - I found that 12 had bought something at Radio Shack in the last month. 3 had bought a Compaq product at Radio Shack. 2 bought the integrated fax/copier/printer/scanner, one bought a complete system. Why did they buy? Impulse - the products were well displayed, and while the sales people may not have known a lot about the products, they knew enough to put together a working system. The idea that if something goes wrong, you can just run around the corner and get a replacement in 5 minutes is attractive. There are almost never any lines at Radio Shack. Sales people probably remember you - these are storefront, not "superstores". There is a segment of the population which buys direct. There is a much larger segment which is not comfortable buying that way. Currently, less than 20% of consumer sales are direct. That means 8 of 10 consumer buyers don't want to "be direct". The fact that the Radio Shack deal produced double the anticipated sales for Compaq seems to confirm that strategy. Remember that in the consumer segment, CPQ outsells DELL about 8 to 1, and that DELL's consumer strategy in 1999 has not changed that picture much. I know that the idea that direct is the winning strategy and that retail is history is a basic tenant of the Church of DELL... but the market data does not happen to support that notion for the consumer space.