OT: Tandy Silver

[Bill Vermillion]

On or about Fri, Aug 20 18:12 , while attempting a Zarathustra 
emulation Bill Campbell thus spake: 

> On Fri, Aug 20, 2004, Rod Caddy wrote:
> ...

> >It has been a while since I sold a Model I. I can remember
> >a time during late 81 through mid 82 we could not get Model
> >IIs. We had one on the showroom floor and I threatened anyone
> >that wanted to sell it off the floor because we could get them
> >if the customer pre-paid. We were selling them as fast as we
> >could setup appointments to show them. Wow, thems wuz thu
> >daze. In beautiful Little Rock, AR.

> Yup. $3,899.00 for a Model II with 64K RAM and a single 640K
> 8in floppy drive. In December of 1982 I was managing the Radio
> Shack Computer Center in Rockville, Maryland's Congressional
> Plaza, and sold it out to the walls including all the machines
> in our classroom. I ordered new Model IIs for the classroom,
> and they arrived in January, about a day before the Model
> 12s were introduced along with new larger hard drives, etc.
> so I had an instantaneous inventory loss. To add insult to
> injury, Fort Worth dumped a bunch of copiers on us to shift the
> inventory losses from the Tandy ware houses to the stores where
> they basically clobbered my bonus with the inventory losses.

When I got my Model I in 1977 the manager saw that this machine
could be a real winner.  I remember seeing the promotion manager of
one of the local TV stations walk out with three floppy drives
under his arm.  He was writing a program that analyzed ratings.

Later when the II came out the manager put on a full-time salesman
that made calls to businesses.

I got to know the manager quite well.  The store was in the Winter
Park Mall - and was one of the smallest RS outlets in the US in
terms of square footage.  It probably was in the bottom 10.

I got to see Dave's sales figures [I was a good friend and he'd
refer a great many with Model I questions to me - the ones the
store could not answer].

July 1977 - the month before the Model I was announced, the 
story grossed $37,000.  Not to bad for that size.  July 1978
he grossed the same about in computer sales alone.  He was second
in overall sales in the US behind one of the largest stores in
Chicago.

These machines were not to be kept in stock and would be ordered
when a customer wanted one.  But Dave always had two or three in
stock at any one time.

His early customers like myself - had standing orders for a machine
- so he would order in our name - and sell them to people who
wanted them.

I got Scott Adams his first floppy drives through Dave when you
could not find them anywhere.

Dave was agressive in selling these, and the other RS managers in
the Central Florida region were not happy that Dave was making so
much money selling them so they started complaining to the
regional and district managers.

RS saw a good thing - doubling store sales in a year did not go
un-noticed.  Normally you'd get canned for going against company
policy, but Dave did such a good job that Radio Shack did not want
to lose him, but had to get him out of that district to placate the
managers in that area.

They made him an offer he could not refuse.  And that was NOT like
the Godfather type offer.

They gave him a district managers job, paid for his relocation, and
all expenses of the move.  And it was to the land of his dreams.
>From Winter Park Florida to Austrailia.  

You have to be a real performer to go against company policy and
have them bend over in order to keep you.

I remember that it was just a few days after RS had announced the
I, probably a weekend of the first week in August.

I walked into the store and saw Barry - a high school student - and
I was the entertainment at his Bar Mitzvah a couple of years
earlier.  I asked him if he knew anything about the Model I and he
said "We have one upstairs".

"upstairs" was just a room at the back of the store with about a 7
foot ceiling that was added over the stock room as the managers
office.  There was a guy at the I, and I waited about 10 to 15
minutes for him to get up and I sat down.  Fifteen minutes later I
put down a $100 deposit to get the machine that was supposed to 
be shipped in about 4 weeks.

Of course the demand soared so instaed of October 1st I got it
on December 27th.   Dave's machine upstairs had a serail number
like 226.  Mine was just a few digits over 10,000 when I got it
almost 4 months later.

When the II hit Dave went into high gear.  Hiring an outside
salesman was not normal for RS, and I think Dave did this on his
own. I don't think he was an official RS employee - but I'm not
sure.   Were outside salesman that called on customers done
by any other RS stores that anyone knows of?

Bill

-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com