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To: Reseller who wrote (20811)	3/8/1998 10:07:00 PM
From: Barron Von Hymen	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 97611

Yeah, But how many whiteboxes were completely screwed up with fried motherboards that kept crashing the O/S? My friend bought one that crashes every hour, but the seller won't exchange the motherboard. I can tell you that about 1/6 of the whiteboxes our lab bought for a bargain, never worked properly since we bought them. We have enough techies in our group to fix standard PC problems like this and the benefits of buying whiteboxes work well for us, but probably not for office types who will pay the premium for the extra service and who don't like to workwith the insides of the boxes. Which is another thing, whiteboxes don't make a huge profit margin, and most of these whitebox sellers are fly by night operations. I've seen three of them open and close just down the street within the last two years.

To: Reseller who wrote (20811)	3/21/1998 8:09:00 AM
From: Reseller	Respond to of 97611

Ingram Micro To Build White Boxes For Selected VARs crn.com By JerryÿRosa Santa Ana, Calif. 5:36 PM EST Fri., Mar. 20, 1998 .............. Even as it revs up its channel assembly engine with brand-name PC vendors, distribution giant Ingram Micro Inc. also will build white boxes for select VARs with proven "house brands" and business strategies. In an interview with CRN, Jerre Stead, chairman and chief executive at Santa Ana-based Ingram Micro, and Mark Mahoney, vice president of sales for Ingram Micro's Frameworks Total Integration Services, discussed Ingram Micro's plans to build white boxes, or non vendor-branded computers, for select VAR customers. Stead and Mahoney stressed Ingram Micro is fully backing the evolving channel assembly programs of Compaq Computer Corp., IBM Corp. and Hewlett Packard Co. as the PC manufacturers seek to grab market share of the lucrative white-box market supplied by VARs that build their own systems. The white-box market represents about 40 percent of the computers sold, according to market research. In addition to backing vendor's PC channel assembly strategies, the executives said Ingram Micro will seek to partner with certain VARs that want to outsource the building of their house-brand PCs. Earlier this month, Ingram Micro unveiled its 488,000-square-foot channel assembly center in Memphis, Tenn., which will be used both for vendor channel assembly programs and for assembling white boxes for VARs. "We are going to drive and enable the OEM,Compaq, IBM and HP,to fulfill their strategy to be able to compete in a white- box arena," Mahoney said. "That is definitely an issue of ours, and concern of ours, to help them to get to that 40 percent of the market." He stressed Ingram Micro will not build a white box with the Ingram Micro name on it, but rather it will build white boxes for VARs that have their own brands. Ingram Micro will enforce strict criteria for VARs seeking to have their white boxes built by the distributor, Mahoney said. That criteria requires that Ingram Micro's potential partners have a strong business model and strong "house-brand" strategy. "There are reseller partners that we are going to support in their house-brand PCs," Mahoney said. "Those are specific resellers that have a house-brand strategy and that is their own brand. [We are] having active conversations with those people, to me, that is a collection of specific resellers with specific house-brand strategies." In some cases, depending on the agreements with VAR customers, Ingram Micro will offer warranty, support and services, Mahoney said. Stead said Ingram Micro will build white boxes for a "specific number of people name-branding their products and not using an Ingram Micro name." At least initially, the distributor does not plan to build white boxes in response to "onesy-twosy" orders, he said. This is so Ingram Micro can ramp up its manufacturing capacity first. "We will not have that kind of full capacity for some period of time," Stead said. The Memphis facility should have a unit capacity of 2 million by the end of the year, Stead said. The distributor also is building manufacturing and configuration capacity in three or four other locations around the world, he said.