BUSINESS MODELS
Donna Higgins, a Louisville, Kentucky, hairstylist, has one of the softest sells in the computer business. "I have an old notebook computer set up at work," she explains. "When I'm doing a color or a perm, I let my customers play solitaire or bridge on it. Many of my customers have never used a computer before, and if they get interested in buying one, I can print out all the information they could possibly want."
Higgins is one of more than 8,000 "technology consultants" who sell PCs for Handtech.com, an Austin, Texas, company that hawks home computers the way Amway peddles home essentials. As with other multilevel marketing enterprises, Handtech.com recruits individuals to sell its products to friends and neighbors who, in turn, are invited to join the sales force. Higgins, for example, leads a team of 49 other moonlighters who sell PCs along with Internet connections, software, and peripherals. She often wears handmade Handtech.com earrings and even possesses that most essential of Web strategies these days: a portal play.
"Handtech's given us the tools to make our own portal," Higgins says. "And it's not just a page to sell you something." Of course, the company's custom portal pages do come with a Supplies Genie, which ensures that upgrades or extras are compatible with a customer's system.
Handtech.com's target is the nearly 50 million American homes that still don't have a PC. Company cofounder and CEO Andrew Harris, who launched Dell's overseas operations, sees "enormous opportunity" for the firm, particularly in emerging markets such as the UK and Japan.
Other computer companies, however, have tried the homespun direct-marketing approach and failed. R. E. "Teddy" Turner IV's firm, Compu-Dawn, recently abandoned selling set-top boxes door-to-door in favor of more traditional retailing. "This is an extremely difficult business model to get right," concedes Harris. "It's taken us three years to get all the elements in place."
Still, Handtech.com is betting that the real digital divide is between computer "haves" and "have-laters," and that the latter are best reached through folksy, down-home methods. Perhaps when it comes to choosing the right PC, as with so many other things, only your hairdresser knows for sure.
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