Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : 3DFX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (9786)	12/21/1998 1:23:00 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 16960

HELP! Could someone with sales, marketing, and/or some retail management explain the work that needs to be done by 3Dfx to achieve the same level of retail sales it now has. Let's just look at the smallest of the issues. Who will you sell to and how will you deliver the goods and collect your money? I may be wrong, but I don't think there is a CompUSA central that orders a 20,000 cards a month and distributes them across the country to all its stores (and even if there is, what about all the smaller stores). More likely you negotiate your prices and payment methods and each store orders separately. This means you need to establish a relationship with hundereds of different people. Know...their names...know their locations...know how much of what they need and by when...don't mess up their orders...assign a sales rep to rectify the problems when they do occur (this means many sales rep and in different time zones and since Europe is a 50% of revenues, in many different countries)...train those sales reps properly (this implies having built the right internal policies and structures)...know who owes you how much and by when and manage your cash flow accordingly (cash flow management itself is a very important issue)...have support people ready so that when customers have hardware conflicts, driver problems, or just can't install the cards properly, you can answer their calls (again in many different geographical zones and in different languages)...make sure that none of your retailers are "starved" for the goods while others have too much of it (have you ever taken a logistics course?)...make sure that you are biting as much as you can chew so that the first impression you leave with the retailers and the consumers is one of a caring company with responsive support structure and not one who just sells you stuff and forgets about you once he's got the money...and so on and so forth. Then you still have to worry about order processing on the production side and the supply related issue. Of course, you can't forget about marketing and advertising to both retailers and consumers. Yes they may have heard of 3Dfx, but that may not mean as much as you think, especially if the consumer is not a hard core FPS gamer (i.e most) and is not very technically savvy. Need I go on? I haven't even touched the demand or the supply side of the issue; I've only talked about the logistics and order processing. Sun Tzu P.S. My analysis affects my trades. My trades do not affect my analysis.