Michael Dell - The Man Behind DELL

The story of the world's No 1 retailer of PCs over the Internet, Dell Computer Corporation (DELL) goes back to 1984, when Michael S. Dell (Michael) established the company with a start-up capital of $1,000, in a 1000 square foot office space, in a small business center in North Austin, Texas.

Michael, then a freshman pre-medicine student at the University of Texas, began his business by selling computer chips and disk drives for IBM PCs at meetings of computer users in Austin. In its first year of operations itself, DELL achieved sales of approximately $ 6 million, which grew to $ 257 million in the next four years. By 1987, DELL opened a sales subsidiary in the United Kingdom to tap the growing European market. 

During 1988-1991, DELL expanded its operations worldwide and set up wholly-owned sales subsidiaries in Canada, France, Italy, Sweden, Germany, Finland, and the Netherlands (Refer Table I).

In 1990, DELL recorded sales of $ 546 million in PCs and peripherals; in the same year it entered the retail business. Soft Warehouse Superstores, now CompUSA agreed to sell its PCs.

The company struck a similar deal in 1991 with Staples, an office supply chain. DELL reported a 109% growth in international sales but recorded a 64% dip in profits in 1990-91...