Gateway, Inc. is a leading personal computer (PC) maker in the U.S. with a 15 percent share of the market as of 2001. The firm sells its machines by phone and via the Internet. Operations include 15 call centers, five manufacturing plants, and 275 Country Store showrooms. Declining prices and market saturation in the PC industry prompted the firm to diversify into Internet access services and other Web-based ventures in the late 1990s.
Gateway was founded in 1985 when partners Ted Waitt, who dropped out of the business management program at the University of Iowa, and Mike Hammond launched TIPC Network, a computer mail-order business, in the Waitt family farmhouse in Sioux City, Iowa. The upstart was funded by a $10,000 loan from Waitt's grandmother. Initially, customers were charged a $20 membership fee to gain access to…
In 1996, Gateway was spending roughly $90 million on advertising annually to continue bolstering its name recognition. By then, the firm had become the world's tenth-largest computer company with earnings of $250 million on sales of $5 billion. It was second only to Dell Computer Corp. among direct sellers of PCs. According to a March 1997 issue of Success, the firm achieved that success be…
Please include a link to this page if you have found this material useful for research or writing a related article. Content on this website is from high-quality, licensed material originally published in print form. You can always be sure you're reading unbiased, factual, and accurate information.
Highlight the text below, right-click, and select “copy”. Paste the link into your website, email, or any other HTML document.
User Comments Add a comment…