Reborn Tech Maniac

Chapter 526 Computer Direct Sales Model
The qualifications of joining the army also gave Jack Trammell the opportunity to obtain a guarantee of 25000 US dollars through the Veterans Bill of Rights. In 1953, he changed from a taxi driver to an owner of an office equipment repair business.

He named this small store in the Bronx, New York City Commodore Portable Typewriter——commodore portable typewriter, and the Commodore brand was born.

Commodore means Commodore. Guy Jack Trammel likes this kind of military-style name, but it's a pity that Admiral-Admiral, General-General and other top titles have already been used. He had to settle for second best
In 1955, Jack Trammell signed an agreement with a company in Czechoslovakia to assemble and sell each other's typewriters in North America.

Since Czechoslovakia is a member of the Warsaw organization, its products cannot be directly imported to the United States, so Jack Trammell took a devious route and founded Commodore Business Machines in Toronto, Canada, to work around such restrictions and In 1962 the company was listed.

However, Jack Trammell's business soon encountered setbacks - Japanese typewriters flooded into the American market, making Czechoslovak typewriters unprofitable.

In order to solve the cash problem, Jack Trammell sold 17.00% of the company's shares to Canadian businessman Irving Gould, and then used the $40 raised to change the main product from a typewriter to a mechanical Formula Calculator - Adder.

As a result, it didn't take long for Jack Trammell to suffer another tragedy. This new business was also hit by similar products from Japan and couldn't continue.

Seeing that the two failures were caused by the same reason, Owen Gould simply suggested that Jack Trammell go to Japan to learn - to see why they can dominate the North American market.

It was this experience in Japan that made Jack Trammell realize that mechanical calculators were about to enter history and be replaced by electronic calculators.

In this way, Commodore quickly released electronic calculators and successfully entered this vibrant market.It's a pity that the good times didn't last long, and it suffered a backstab.

Texas Instruments, which provides integrated circuits, found that the electronic calculator market had unlimited business opportunities, so it was unwilling to be only a component supplier. competing products.

This blow was catastrophic. Fortunately, Irving Gould took action again and spent US$300 million to acquire an IC design and semiconductor manufacturing company, MOS Technology, Inc., from among Commoda's suppliers, and created A vertical product manufacturing system like Texas Instruments no longer has to be controlled by others.

With the frantic competition, the electronic calculator market was quickly ruined, and the situation can be described as devastated.

The developer of the first commercially successful personal computer, the Altair 8800, Edward Roberts, was one of the losers. As a result, his company MITS fell into a debt crisis, and this was the only way to launch the Altair 1974 in December 12. Come to my rescue.

Commodore’s life was also difficult, but its acquisition of MOS Technology, Inc, and the 8-bit microprocessor MOS 6502 developed by it brought new opportunities.

Chuck Peddle, the chief designer of this CPU, told Jack Trammell that the development of electronic calculators had reached a dead end, and personal computers were the future.

Jack Trammell's reply was very simple, first show me a result.

In September 1976, Chuck Peddle came to Jobs' garage, visited the Apple II, and quickly fell in love with the machine, so he arranged to demonstrate it to Commodore's senior management.

As a result, Jobs said, "You may be interested in spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy our company", which made Commodore retreat.

You know, at that time Apple was just a simple partnership company composed of Jobs, Woz, and Ron Wayne, and Ron Wayne withdrew his shares because he was afraid that the company's debts would drag him into the abyss of bankruptcy. The commercial value of Apple II has not been verified, it is simply an empty shell.

In the end, Commodore gave the answer that he would develop his own personal computer.

In this way, after a brief intersection between Apple and Commodore, the two companies parted ways.Apple received Markkula's investment and turned into a joint-stock company, and its operations were on the right track; Commodore launched its own personal computer, Commodore PET, in October 1977.

In 1977, there were two other important personal computers—Apple's Apple II and Tandy's TRS-6, which came out in June and August.

The CPUs of Commodore PET and Apple II are MOS 6800 of Motorola MC 6502 series, and the CPU of TRS-80 is Zilog Z8080 of Intel 80 series.

The total sales of these three types of personal computers have reached tens of thousands of levels, bringing the development of personal computers into the second stage. Various manufacturers such as Atari have launched their own 8-bit personal computers, forming A lively scene of contention among a hundred schools of thought broke out.

The first-generation Fangyuan computer, successfully developed in the second half of 1979, is also one of them.

In the first stage, the most representative model, the Altair 8800 developed by Edward Roberts, although supported by Microsoft's BASIC, is more like a printed circuit in which all parts of a computer are assembled in terms of hardware architecture. The output devices of the single-board computer on the board are often just some signal lights.

For Apple II, Commodore PET, and TRS-80, the circuit board is packaged in the main box, and a more intuitive CRT display is used as the output device.

The Commodore PET is shaped like an "all-in-one machine", integrating the keyboard, main chassis, and monitor. It looks very compact. Once launched, it was very popular and achieved success in the US and European markets.

But it is undeniable that Commodore PET is almost the weakest among similar products.

于是康懋达加紧研发，升级机型，并分别在1980年和1982年推出全新平台的8位个人电脑Commodore VIC-20与Commodore 64。

These two types of products support the TV as a display terminal.The launch price is as low as 299.9 US dollars and 595 US dollars.

The Commodore 64, in particular, had a catchphrase - "Why would you want to buy a game console that will keep your kids entertained when you can buy a computer that will prepare your kids for college".

As a result, a fierce price war broke out in the home video game console market and the low-end personal computer market.

Last year, in January 1983, Commodore launched a new round of price wars, taking the lead in reducing the price of the Commodore VIC-1 to $20, and the price of the Commodore 139 to $64.

Texas Instruments fought back a week later, lowering the price of its own product, the TI 99/4A, to $149.

Seeing this, Commodore directly lowered the price of Commodore VIC-20 to US$100, forcing Texas Instruments to follow up and cut the price of TI 99/4A to US$100.

Commodore was still unyielding and wanted to capture more market share, continuing to lower the price of the Commodore 64 to $200.

Then... there was no more. Texas Instruments announced its largest loss in history and admitted the game.

As for competitors at the same price in the field of home video game consoles, they fell apart because of the collapse of the entire market.

Commodore had the last laugh in this shopping battle. The total sales volume of Commodore VIC-20 exceeded 100 million units early, the sales volume of Commodore 64 also reached millions, and the company's sales exceeded 10 billion US dollars.

Behind these glorious records, it is naturally the credit of Jack Trammell's command.

The cheapest 8-bit CPU is developed by MOS Technology, which in turn belongs to Commodore.

In this way, Jack Trammell created a vertically unified management system for Commodore, enabling a series of predatory price competition.

In addition, Commodore has a wide range of sales channels, discount stores, department stores, and even toy stores are all within its sphere of influence.

More importantly, Jack Trammell is very good at company management. Like Japanese companies, he controls costs in all aspects to support him in the price war.

Of course, Jack Trammell has his own problems.For example, he runs the company almost to the point of doing everything by himself, and the budget is useless, and all expenditures exceeding US$1000 must be signed by him.

But then again, without these extraordinary qualities, Jack Trammell might not have been able to transform from a concentration camp survivor to the boss of a large company with hundreds of millions of sales.

What Tang Huan likes is Jack Trammell's ability to turn the technically strong personal computer into a more down-to-earth electronic consumer product, and then push it to thousands of households.

Tang Huan was ashamed of the sophisticated means of cost control he showed in this process.

As for the danger of the other party breaking the rules of the existing system, compared to the "catfish effect" it can bring, it is completely within the acceptable range.

"If President Reagan is a 'great communicator' in politics, then Don is a 'great communicator' in business. Although we haven't been together for a long time, you make me feel like an old friend for many years." In At the dinner table, Jack Trammell said happily.

"My principle has always been to be kind to others and make money with harmony. No matter what happens, as long as everyone is patient, there will be no miscommunication." Tang Huan smiled slightly, "Of course, in the face of interests, my harmony sometimes fails , Steve Ross has been fighting with me until now."

"You brokered the Atari deal between me and Steve Ross, which can be regarded as helping Warner to solve the big trouble. He must show affection to some extent, right?" Jack Trammell asked curiously.

"It's just an exchange of benefits. Of course, a business man like Steve Ross can be flexible." Tang Huan raised his glass for a moment, and then said seriously: "Actually, the reason why I did this was selfish. The purpose is to further expand the popularity of Fangyuan PCs."

"It's understandable." Jack Trammell nodded indifferently, "Just like I bought Atari, it was also to prove that since I can create the Commodity, I can also copy this glory to the next one. enterprise."

"What courage!" Tang Huan laughed loudly, "I appreciate the sentence you said the most, 'The computers we manufacture should be aimed at the public, not the upper class'."

After Tang Huan pointed out his classic quotations, Jack Trammell couldn't help but feel happy. He picked up a cigar and lit it happily.

"Steve Jobs is also claiming to allow everyone to have a computer, and we have all seen the MAC conference." Tang Huan smiled playfully, "I think he actually made elite computers, not mass computers."

Jack Trammell thought about it for a moment, and then nodded deeply.

"I hope to bring the marketing system you formed at Kangmaoda, which is to make professional computers into mass electronic consumer goods, to the Fangyuan personal computer standard platform." Tang Huan expressed his plan.

"The products of Fangyuan PC and Commodore are very different. One of the important impressions they gave me is that the system architecture is very flexible, but whether a product similar to Commodore 64 can be launched, I still can't guarantee it."

Jack Trammell's attitude was very cautious, and he asked in a deep voice, "Don, do you have any suggestions for me?"

"I do have some ideas." Tang Huan said slowly and carefully, "What do you think, how about introducing the direct sales model to the personal computer industry? After removing the middleman, manufacturers can sell products directly to customers, which in turn enables companies to sell products at a lower cost. Prices provide customers with a variety of products, and can even achieve on-demand production, that is, there are orders first, and then computers are assembled according to customer requirements, which is equivalent to selling products before they are produced."

"A bold and exquisite idea." Jack Trammell's eyes shone with wisdom, "However, this model will test the internal management level of the company."

"Isn't it your specialty to tap the internal potential of the company and strive for excellence in all aspects?" Tang Huan complimented with a smile, "Recently, PeopleSoft has been working on Customer Relation Management—Customer Relationship Management or CRM, and Supply Chain Management— —Supply chain management, that is, the computerized information solution of SCM, has formed product-level results, which may help the implementation of the direct sales model.”

"Don came here prepared." Jack Trammell had such an expression on his face, "Then I'm going to ask you about the inside knowledge..."

(End of this chapter)