Compaq Casts a Wide Net
TO SAY Compaq Computer Corp. is stepping up efforts to snare sales through the Web might be a bit of an understatement.
Within several weeks of each other, the Houston-based company established Compaq.com, a business unit it hopes will account for about a quarter of its business in the near future; closed on its purchase of Internet mall Shopping.com; and broke out its AltaVista Internet search engine subsidiary into a separate firm. All this comes on top of Compaq’s acquisition of Digital Equipment Corp. last June.
Some 8% to 10% of the company’s business is currently done through direct marketing. In the next two years Compaq.com vice president/general manager Kenny Kurtzman wants to raise that figure to 25% and bring Web-generated sales to 20%. Right now, though, Compaq intends to sell $1 million worth of computers each month on the site.
Compaq.com’s At Home online store offers a variety of the firm’s Presario desktop and notebook computers and peripherals for the small office/home office market. Other product lines include Armada portables and specially configured systems. Compaq has several million business-to-business customers.
Compaq reportedly won’t spin Compaq.com off into a separate company for a while yet. At Home is one way Compaq.com aims to save money on operating costs by employing fewer people, Kurtzman notes.
At press time, Compaq had just opened the online store in the United States and had not made any decisions on how or where it would advertise the service.
Grand Plans Compaq also expects big things from AltaVista and Shopping.com.
“The anticipated traffic from AltaVista and Compaq Internet PCs will enable Shopping.com to grow faster and more efficiently than stand-alone e-commerce companies,” says Compaq CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer.
“In turn, the increased knowledge gained from users’ online purchasing interests will allow Alta Vista to better organize content and information for its users.”
