A few lessons from this program
Here’s an edited excerpt from our conversation.
I looked at Fry’s and saw that wall of monitors, that was empty, and we sat and talked about this. We said, we should have our product on every monitor out there. This sells monitors. Monitors are a good thing to sell. And we allow you to compare monitors because you could actually have beautiful art that you want to look at side-by-side. It was that simple.
And I physically would go to the different Fry’s, talk to the manager on the floor in the computer department, and say to him, “Why isn’t this on?”
I’d stick it in the drive, pop it up on the computer screen, their jaw would drop and they’d go, “Oh, well we’re not allowed to just put this on here.”
I said, “Okay, I’ll tell you what. I’m going to give you a free copy of it, just for yourself.”
And they would say, “thank you.” It’s not payola, because we’d do it through the company. And separately, we would send them a few copies to put on the monitors. And we found out that it was all a bureaucratic nightmare.
So we wrote a letter to Fry’s saying, “You have permission to throw us on your monitors.” We just sent it out of the blue to them. “And here are some free copies. Give these copies to your floor managers.”
They did that. All 22 Fry’s locations had it. And they started selling extraordinary numbers of our screen savers. I can’t tell you exact numbers because of privacy issues, but pallet a day were going out the door.
It was great.
It was the first time people actually could have art on their computer screens. We are the bestselling screen saver in history.
What’s your opinion? Do agree with me that “cool technology” isn’t enough? Or do you think I’m exaggerating the power of salesmanship by pulling this short excerpt from an hour-long program?
[Thank you Elmer Thomas for suggesting I interview Reichart.]
