To: Fred Fahmy who wrote (6591 ) 12/6/1997 12:22:00 AM From: Douglas V. Fant Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 13925
Fred, Good to see you back around! I am sitting here studying CREAF's Annual Report. I am studying their latest initiative entitled Building the Coolest PC". Right now as best I can tell, CREAF is strong in sales of multimedia add-ons to system integrators and value added resellers of PC's. However as best I can tell CREAF is not big in selling multimedia kits to OEM's. If you look at CREAF's sales the audio and video/communication portions of the business have grown over the last three years as a percentage of CREAF's total business, while the multimedia kit portion of the business has shrunk partly because of their withdrawal from manufacture of CD-ROM's. Suddenly the reason for all of CREAF's recent strategic moves become clear when you look at the rationale behind the "Building the Coolest PC" campaign- and that is to sell branded multimedia components as a complete kit to OEM's. Wham! There is the reason for the purchase of Cambridge Soundworks. Wham! There is the reason to form a strategic alliance with 3DFX and ship its Graphics Blaster Exxtreme Video cards/Chipsets with the lethal Voodoo2 Chipsets, in tandem no less. Wham! There is the reason for the development of the EMU-8008 audio controller chip with PCI bus mastering capabilities. CREAF has pulled together a truly top of the line, lethal, first class combination of multimedia components and is going to seek deals with OEM's for the whole kits. In this fashion CREAF could have a serious presence in all three major channels of distribution, sytems integrators, resellers, and OEM's- a very rational businesss strategy. Now I am willing to bet that the "industry-wowing partnerships", if they click will be selling these total multimedia kits to OEM's.... That is some potentially serious business increase- keep your fingers crossed- CREAF is doing well already but OEM deals could really build product demand- and the good news is that the various components going into the total package are of a very high quality.... All of the above is from CREAF's Annual Report.... Sincerely, Doug F.