The Ledger
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Post-acquisition, Dell's bureaucracy operated like a slow-moving aircraft carrier
“There was a lot of corporate, you know, like, requests, and a lot of, ah, decisions that would take a long time, because there was a lot of analysis that had to be done, understandably slow, so it was a public, ah, company, and I understand that, but, Man, I k…”
Gonzalez: Dell did a phenomenal job preserving the Alienware brand
“Honestly, they did a phenomenal job of preserving the brand.”
Gonzalez: Apple Was the Only Computer Maker Prioritizing Distinct Design
“The only guys that were really doing something
Interesting with the PC that gave it a design, gave it a life was Apple.”
Gonzalez: Major PC makers failed to anticipate the rapid growth of gaming PCs
“There was quite a bit of pressure back then for them, but they didn't understand our market. They had no idea that this market would grow so fast and that there were so many people that were closet gamers, if you will.”
Azor: Alienware Hardware Is Instantly Recognizable Without Its Logo
“Alienware was, is still one of the few brands that has, like, a personality behind it where you can cover up the logo and know immediately that that is an Alienware product.”
Azor: Boutique PC makers gain advantage via emerging tech unfit for mass production
“Because we were smaller, we were, we had access to certain components and ultra high tech and emerging technologies that weren't ready for mass scale and mass adoption. So that we used our size to our advantage.”
Michael Dell temporarily pulled out of due diligence before acquiring Alienware
“Well, the funny thing is that we come to terms. He sends his guys over. They start doing the due diligence. Then, a month or two into it, all of a sudden, Michael sends, you know, calls me and says, hey, we're gonna have to pull out.”
Azor: Alienware initially competed internally with Dell's XPS brand post-acquisition
“Initially when Dell acquired Alienware, we were still competing against XPS gaming because XPS was their gaming brand.”
Gonzalez: Early Alienware PCs averaged $6,000 to $7,000 each
“Yeah, yeah, no, actually, back then it was, the machines were averaging closer to six to 7000 dollars.”
Enabling direct online ordering scaled Alienware's sales to over 100 PCs monthly
“I think the inflection point was when we evolved the website so that customers could actually order it on the website instead of just configuring it. You know, and that is when things started going from, like, 20, 30 computers a month to 50, then 70, then a hu…”
Alienware harvested scarce 1 GHz AMD CPUs from brand new Gateway PCs
“When AMD launched the first one gigahertz processor, we couldn't get our hands on it, so Nelsonerotics came up with the idea, just buy a bunch of gateways that have the processor in it. We'll take out the one gigahertz We'll put a cheaper two or 300 dollar pro…”
Early Alienware let customers mail in games for factory pre-installation
“We would actually tell customers they could send us their games, they could send us their joystick, their game pads, whatever hardware they wanted pre-configured on the computer, they can mail it to us. We would install and configure everything for them, so th…”
Gonzalez: Alienware was initially funded entirely with credit card debt
“Listen, it was credit card debt. We didn't have any cash.”
Merchant processors held Alienware's revenue for 60 days over fraud suspicions
“And they'd be like, oh, we have to hold it for 60 days to make sure this is legitimate. And we're trying to run a business. We have to, you know, you have to buy parts, you have to pay yourself, you have to pay rent, you have to pay services. And yeah, they wo…”
Azor: Joined Alienware in 1998 at age 16
“Yeah, it was 1998. I was 16 years old. I was a junior in high school.”
Gonzalez: Alienware mimicked Dell's direct-to-consumer business model
“The only reason I said Dell was because Dell, we mimicked Dell's business model. We didn't reinvent the wheel.”