There was a guy who came to our store every Saturday morning to read computer magazines we had there. His name is Corey. I don’t remember him buying the magazines but he would typically stay there two or three hours. He had the closest thing to a photographic memory of anyone I had ever met. Eventually, I asked Corey if he wanted a job working in our store. He replied “you mean you would PAY ME?” When I said yes, we had eone of the strongest technical guys in the country working in our store.
After a few months, we got a new Altos computer and the SCO Xenix [a form of Unix and Linux] Operating System. This system shipped with the source code for the whole system including the Kernel. It came in about 10 days before the end of the month which was on a Thursday. I needed Corey to work on systems to deliver to customers at month’s end. I told Corey he could not open the box until he had all the systems ready to deliver to Clients. That built a fire under him and after the last day of the month, Friday, I gave him permission to open the box and he set the new system up and started to study it.
I drove by the store late Friday night and Corey was still studying the new system. He had not gone home. I did the same thing on Saturday night. He was still there and still had not gone home. I again came by late Sunday afternoon. He was still there. He had slept some on a sofa in the store, had ordered pizza delivered but he was so focused on the new system that he spent the whole three days learning it inside and out. I learned that this “unquenchable thirst for knowledge is one sure path to a successful career in technology.
We had hired a salesman, Pete, who was able to communicate well with Corey. These two guys could talk about the new technology while the rest of us did not understand any of what they were saying. Pete was able to sell the sophisticated systems that Corey would assemble and configure.
As our sales grew, we added dealerships for other brands and other companies. We now had a staff that could sell, install and support multi-user SCO Xenix as well as Novell networks. During this time there was a flood of new products and announcements. There were more announcements than actual products. For these the term: vaporware aka hot air was established. From Wikipedia: In the computer industry, vaporware is a product, typically computer hardware or software, that is announced to the general public but is never actually manufactured nor officially cancelled.
We were the technical leaders in the Tulsa market. We capitalized on that position by following the concept of selling clients based on the “technical risk difference.” That is, we sold on the basis of buying from a competitor would mean they would be taking a risk because we were the technical leaders. At the height of our success, we had four CPAs working in our store.
We dominated the Tulsa Computer market. We advertised in newspapers, radio and on TV. At that time there were only NBC, CBS and ABC stations. We ran TV ads on the morning shows on all three networks.
MicroAge held a convention of the stores each year. George and I flew to Phoenix for the convention. Our store won Franchise of the Year on the strength of the strong performance of our first MicroAge store in Tulsa. Our Franchise of the Year award included the keys to a white Cadillac Eldorado which I proudly drove back to Tulsa.
At the convention, I was also elected to the newly-formed Franchise Advisory Council which met quarterly to allow the stores to have representation during important Franchiser decisions. At each meeting I would “pound on the table” and ask when the Franchisor would provide the Accounting System we all needed.
Soon, our success went to our heads and we wanted to open a second store. We approached our bank for a larger line of credit. They turned us down. James, our newly-hired Controller, recommended we go to a new bank that was just opening. They gave us a new line of credit for $400,000. We all learned later that our financial position was not as strong as we thought as our accounting reporting was always behind and we had some receivables were double-booked and a few large payables were not properly booked.