Direct Marketing

Division name: Direct Marketing


Founded: 1978
Address: 1330 Kifer Road, Sunnyvale

DMK Facility at Kifer Road Sunnyvale

Description:

Prior to 1976, the sales of HP supplies were handled by the responsible manufacturing division. In May of 1976 a new division was formed within HP. The Customer Service Division (CSD) was primarily responsible for field customer engineering and repair of HP computer products and peripherals. The new division also had responsibility for the marketing of computer supplies and consumables. CSD was headed by Tom Lauhon.

HP's Computer Supplies Operation (CSO) was started in 1978 to provide a convenient way (direct order from a catalog) for HP customers to purchase supplies for their machines. In the beginning, these supplies were mostly consumables: discs, tapes, paper, pens, etc. The original supplies operation was located at 333 Logue Avenue in Mountain View (Logue Avenue was the west entrance to HP's Mountain View facility at 690 East Middlefield Road). In October of 1979, the operation moved to the Kifer Road facility.

Computer supplies revenues were just over $10M in 1979. By 1981, the business had grown to $50M. It more than doubled again to $130M in 1985.

The direct product offering was expanded to include furniture and by 1981 the operation also sold software, printers and terminals. By this time, half of the HP supplies business in the US was coming in over the phone. HP had also opened supplies warehouses in Germany and in the UK. In late 1984, the Computer Supplies Operation was promoted to division status and named the Direct Marketing Division (DMK). DMK’s first general manager was Will Carleton.

In 1984, Industrial Market Research company rated HP as the best supplier of floppy discs in the computer dealer channel.

The computer supplies business peaked at over $275M in 1987.

In August of 1988, Mike Naggiar became the GM of DMK. In late 1989, Naggiar became the marketing manager of the Personal Computer Group. He was replaced by Gil Merme as general manager of the Direct Marketing Division.


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