The next day was Monday, and Ivan Adolph, CEO of the American retail giant Sears, visited.
In this era of "channel is king", Apple has to rely on Sears!
Tian Shuai talked with him for more than an hour, and the two sides reached a cooperation agreement. Apple-ll personal computers can be sold at Sears retail stores, but each machine sold must pay Sears $200. If you sell 100,000 machines, that's $20 million, which was a lot of money in 1975!
But no way, Apple doesn't have its own sales channels.
Before you become stronger, there are some things you have to endure.
The Apple flagship store in Los Angeles is the first step for Apple to build its own channel! Li Zetian found that the establishment of a flagship store was expensive, so he did not let Apple expand blindly, but first took the flagship store as a pilot to see if it was successful, and quickly promoted it. New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Houston and other American universities Cities as the first targets.
With your own flagship store, you not only have channels, but even after-sales can be guaranteed!
After-sales do well, in order to retain customers!
At present, Apple's main users are a group of computer enthusiasts and enterprises. They all have certain technical capabilities, so the demand for after-sales is relatively small, and they are usually contacted by telephone.
Following Li Zetian's suggestion, Tian Shuai contacted Wal-Mart immediately after negotiating cooperation with Sears.
In 1972, Wal-Mart was listed in New York, and its value doubled 4,900 times in the next 25 years (to 1999). If Apple bought a stake in Wal-Mart in 1975, not to mention forming an alliance with Wal-Mart, the huge The return on investment is worth the investment.
At noon, Tian Shuai and Li Zetian talked about Walmart when they had lunch together in the company cafeteria.
"Mr.li, I expressed my intention to cooperate with Walmart, and the other party agreed, hoping to attract popularity with Apple-ll high-tech products."
Li Zetian nodded when he heard the words, and immediately asked, "Do you agree to Apple's shareholding?"
"I didn't agree to this. Wal-Mart went public in 1972 for financing, and there was no shortage of funds, and their company itself had huge cash flow, so there was no need for financing, so they did not accept Apple's shareholding request. If we want to get Wal-Mart's shares , you can only buy tradable shares from the stock market!"
Li Zetian pondered for a while, since Wal-Mart does not accept the shareholding, then forget it, the cooperation has been achieved. Right now, Apple doesn't have a lot of money. The so-called "greedy and chewy" is still a way to develop Apple with peace of mind and quickly build a flagship store! Of course, if you have spare money, you might as well go to the stock market to buy Wal-Mart stock.
…
…
Li Zetian, as always, lived a dull life. At the end of March, AT&T sent an inspection team. No doubt, they were shocked after seeing Apple-ll and Excel, and said on the spot that they would persuade the company to buy them.
On April 1, a strange man came to Apple, adding a touch of color to Li Zetian's peaceful life.
Calling himself Gary Kildare, he was in his thirties and earned a Ph.D. in computer science from HSD University in 1972, and in 1974, helped create Silicon Valley's most prestigious "Homebrew Club," a hub for computer hobbyists. Heaven, Jobs and Wozniak are all members of this club. After Li Zetian came to California, he also went here and communicated with these computer enthusiasts.
Gary Kildare is completely a technology god who can compare with Wozniak. He first created the disk operating system (DOS) in 1973 and named it the CP/M operating system. However, the CP/M operation at this time The system is not mature enough, it is at most an "embryo", so it is quite neglected, and the computer industry turns a deaf ear!
In his previous life, Gary Kildare completed a complete set of CP/M application systems in 1975. Since then, the system has been adopted by computer manufacturers in various countries, and the software around him has also been developed explosively. Afterwards, CP/M became red and purple, became popular in mythology, occupied a dominant position in 8-bit microcomputers, and was praised as the "standard octet software bus", and Dr. Gary Kildare became famous since then!
In fact, Gary Kildare had the opportunity to become the richest man in the world, but he missed the biggest business in his life.
Because the CP/M operating system is extremely popular, IBM first found him, but he didn't pay attention to it and asked his wife to negotiate with IBM's representative, but the negotiation broke down. Subsequently, Bill Gates took over the business. The MS-DOS operating system launched by Microsoft almost completely copied the CP/M operating system. The system functions are almost the same, and even the instructions are exactly the same as the CP/M. The BIOS program is almost unchanged from Gary Kildare's. Copy the BIOS of CP/M in the past.
It can be said that Bill Gates made his fortune by copying Kildare!
This time, Gary Kildare came to Apple to sell his CP/M operating system.
A lot of thoughts moved in Li Zetian's mind. Gary Kildare didn't realize the importance of CP/M operating system at all, but Li Zetian knew very well that it was CP/M that Microsoft would dominate the operating system market in the future!
Apple has obtained the authorization of the Unix operating system to develop the MacOS graphical interface operating system. Naturally, CP/M will not be used in the future, but Microsoft has no operating system yet, and the BASIC interpreter is just a program, not an operating system. If Microsoft acquires people with CP/M operating systems, both Apple and Microsoft will have operating systems!
"Mr.li, what do you think of the CP/M operating system? Will Apple-ll personal computers work with the system?" Gary Kildare asked.
Li Zetian smiled and said: "Mr. Gary Kildare, to be honest, we have just obtained the authorization of the Unix operating system from AT&T, you see, this is the authorization certificate agreement!" After speaking, Li Zetian took out the agreement The book was handed to Gary Kildare.
Gary Kildare didn't look very good after reading it, and he thought that Apple-ll would use the Unix operating system.
Just when he was disappointed, Li Zetian changed the subject and said, "To be honest, the CP/M system still has many flaws, but it just complements Microsoft's BASIC program!"
"Mr. Gary Kildare, I wonder if you would consider joining Microsoft? In fact, both Apple and Microsoft were created by me. If you can join Microsoft, I can consider switching Apple-ll to CP/M operation. System! Of course, the CP/M system will also be sold to Microsoft, but I will give you $100,000 and 1% of Microsoft’s shares! By the way, I will show you Microsoft’s latest software, Excel spreadsheets…”
After reading it, Gary Kildare was very surprised at Excel, "Mr.li, this is a very good office software, which will definitely be liked by many people!"
"Yes, Mr. Gary Kildare, so you need to know what I mean by giving you 1% of Microsoft!"
"Mr.li, I'll go back and think about it!"
"no problem!"
As soon as Gary Kildare left, Tian Shuai met him at the door.
"Mr.li, who was that person just now?" Tian Shuai came to Li Zetian's office and asked casually.
"Gary Kildare, the inventor of the CP/M operating system!"
Tian Shuai smiled and said, "I was going to ask him for permission to use the CP/M operating system, but I didn't expect him to come first!"
Li Zetian laughed, revealing a meaningful smile...
PS: The network is stuck, and it is only now posted, asking for a ticket and a reward!