Dell Incorporated"s CEO and founder, Michael Dell, defended his company"s new strategy to begin selling desktop PCs in Wal-Mart stores in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico starting in June, saying the departure from the direct sales model the company pioneered is part of a new effort to expand its market. "The direct model was a real revolution in the computer industry, but it"s not a religion. We"re expanding the number of places and ways people can buy our products," said Dell.
It"s not the first time the company has tried the approach. More than a decade ago, the computer maker briefly sold its product through retailers such as Wal-Mart"s Sam"s Club stores in the U.S. before abandoning the strategy and concentrating on the direct sales model it pioneered. Now Dell thinks the time is right to give the strategy a second chance.
"One thing that"s different is that Dell is about 20 times larger, so that kind of changes things a bit. I also think that price points have changed fairly dramatically so in the early 90s a computer was a couple thousand dollars and now computers are quite a bit less expensive," the CEO said. The company"s founder also acknowledged that design is becoming an increasing important differentiator as the price of computers goes down. He promised that his company would be introducing new products in the coming months that address that issue.