View from the Mountain

What good resellers do

My first adventures into the technology world were actually as a reseller.  It was 1982, and I had purchased one of the first Apple II+ computers to land in Eastern Canada.  The reseller that I bought it from was actually a job costing software company.  They got the Apple authorization in the hopes that it might be a nice side stream of revenue, but they like many folks knew almost nothing about microcomputers.

I managed to figure out more about my Apple II in a week or so than anyone in dealership knew.  It wasn't long until they were trying to hire me, and I finally gave in and started selling Apple IIs in fall of 1982.  We opened four more stores and sold close to three million dollars worth of computers that year.   I ended up the sales manager, and we had over twenty people working in those stores.

It was during that time I learned to appreciate what a good reseller could do.  With some time and energy we could provide exactly what the customer wanted and make certain that it worked just how the customer needed it to work.  We took the systems out of the box, installed enhancements and made certain that it all worked together as flawlessly as the technology of the day would allow.  At the time Apple only had a couple of sales people in Canada so if they were going to be successful, they needed the resellers.

We were the technology intermediaries and between people who knew how to build the systems and the people who needed to learn how to use the systems.

It wasn't long before that changed.  Apple started hiring people including me.  They started taking business away from the reseller.  First to go was the education business.  Then they started authorizing chains which didn't know the product nearly as well as the local dealerships.  They were able to low ball prices.  Then came the catalog stores that didn't charge local tax.  Then it was Apple's own on line stores with their special deals, and finally to add insult to injury Apple opened their own stores and has given them the best of everything including location and availability.

It's been a lot of years since then.  Dell has changed the face of computer resale forever, but other things have made reselling computers made by large manufacturers a chancy proposition.  In fact I was joking with one Apple reseller today that they could start using the old farmer joke and replace farmer with Apple reseller.

The joke would be the following  An Apple reseller wins the lottery.  Someone asks what he is going to do with the money.  The reseller says he'll just keep selling Apple computers until the money runs  out.

My new MacBook was ordered last Friday.  It was shipped from China early this week, and I'm using it now.  Custom configuration at the computer factories in China is going to make it harder and harder to be successful as a computer reseller without finding other streams of revenue. 

That bring me to the point of my article.  There are still companies that value their resellers and absolutely need resellers in order to grow.

Webmail.us, where I'm VP of market development,  absolutely needs resellers in order to reach customers around the globe.  Resellers allow us to get our product in front of customers that we would never reach otherwise.  That's really important to our company, and I don't see that ever changing.  We need the leverage.

We work really hard at giving our resellers first class treatment.  We have two people, Adam and Trevor, dedicated to making certain our resellers understand our programs and get plugged into the right one.

Standing behind Adam and Trevor is our Customer Care Team which provides support to resellers and helps them solve customer problems when  they can't figure out the solution on their own.

To Webmail.us our resellers' specialized knowledge is priceless.  There are small markets which we do not have the time to understand.  Resellers are usually already in these markets and can be the difference between success and failure.

So if you have been beaten to pulp in the wold of computer resellers, don't consider that the only way that resellers can be treated.  We are a company that appreciates the impact resellers have on our bottom line.

In the computer world you're a necessary evil.  In our world of email you are a necessity if we are to reach customers around the world.

While hardware has become a commodity world owned by the large manufacturers, services like providing email accounts to small and medium business is something which can be dominated by resellers.

If you know a particular subset of customers very well and see that they are challenged by their current email solutions, with your help we can fix their pain, and you can make some money along the way.

Our email solution is very reliable and has features such as a great web mail interface,  spam and virus filtering, calendars,IMP folders and RSS that appeal to certain groups.  You can check out our feature list at Webmail features.  If you want to contact us to discuss the world of reselling email, our phone number is 866-392-3336, or you can email us by going to our reseller page.

There is plenty of room for good resellers to take their technical expertise and sell email services to small businesses.  If you're interested give us a call.  We are waiting to be your partner,.

The most complex of times to live

Yesterday the Roanoke Times printed an article, "Menhaden is a small, but important fish."  The article talks about the link between menhaden and sport fishery.

Many fishermen know of menhaden only as bait, while most other Virginians probably don't know of it at all. But scientists call the small, oily fish one of the most important in the sea, because stripers, bluefish and numerous other fish depend on menhaden for their survival, as do many sea birds and marine mammals.

Actually the menhaden story is even more complex than almost any of us can imagine.  Yet is the kind of story that really points out the dilemma we face as a modern society.  How do we survive and even thrive without destroying that which has given us the ability to get where we are?  I don't think there are any easy answers.

Last August I did a post, "The Menhaden saga and limits to growth," about this same subject.  I wrestled with a number of issues in the post.

So as always, the decisions we make in the modern world are complex. There are often poorly understood consequences to managing or not managing any large scale resource like Menhaden.

We had better pay attention or we could face something like the Canadian Cod collapse.  Before we ignore the Menhaden and let them be managed by corporate America, we need to understand the full impact of  our government's inaction.

Regulating the harvest of the Menhaden stocks needs to be viewed from a perspective of doing what's best not just for a few but for the many. Unfortunately that isn't exactly a black and white situation, but that shouldn't stop us from trying. If we can never understand to limits to our growth, we will self-destruct.

It's not surprising  the fate of the fate of a small, bony fish is intricately intertwined with our own whether we know it or not.

Since I wrote the article, the Beaufort, NC menhaden factory has closed.  The land is worth far more as a development than it is as a menhaden factory. 

And this is where the paradox begins.  There are some good reasons that we need to harvest menhaden and plenty of reason why we should let other creatures of the sea harvest them.  How do we determine the greater good in a very complex situation.  The information that I found had 250 jobs in Reedsville, Va dependent on the menhaden harvest.  In the grand scheme of things that's not a lot of jobs unless you happen to be living in Reedsville, Va.

I don't know much about Reedsville, but the whole county has less than 13,000 people so I can imagine 250 or 500 jobs are pretty important in an area that isn't exactly booming.  It will also probably be a while before the land becomes so valuable that developers buy out the menhaden plant like in Beaufort, NC.

Having considered all of this and the fish oil tablets I take, I still believe we need to regulate the menhaden harvest.  I'll go further and say that we don't have many more chances to keep our fisheries healthy.  It's a huge problem protecting the resources that often are the only livelihood of people whose lives have been tied to those resources for generations.

Yet as some point, we need our politicians, all of them, to figure out that if we don't start considering the bigger picture, we're all going to fighting over diminishing resources.

We live on a very resilient planet.  Anyone who has looked at the reforestation of the east coast knows that  land and resource use can change dramatically.  The east coast has gone from being intensely farmed to intensely forested.  There were economic and technology reasons driving that change.

What do we want from our east coast fishery, jobs, economic development, fish oil, or seafood?  We probably want all of that, but it's rare that you can get everything that you want.  Do we want to farm the east coast fishery or place limits on that fishery to encourage a broader use?

It's also rare that we make intelligent decisions these days, but if we want to keep the menhaden around we better start applying some of that intelligence.  An article I read recently in the NY Times, "Maine Struggling to Revive Ailing Economy," reminds of the problems of being a resource rich, naturally beautiful, but development challenged area. 

Collectively we need to figure it out so we can all enjoy beautiful places, have jobs, and utilize resources that don't disappear.

Morning glow & fried Twinkies

Having never been involved in a major newspaper story, I was a little concerned about how it would turn out.  Once I read it, I actually felt pretty good about the way the story came across.  The WSJ article, "At Apple, Secrecy Complicates Life But Maintains Buzz," had this statement.

But Mr. Sobotta says the NASA official -- a major customer, who spends millions of dollars a year on Apple products -- was miffed.

Actually I may or may not have used the word "miffed" but I had shared with Nick Wingfield, the author of the article, some correspondence with the customer. Of course I had the customer's agreement to do that if confidentiality was maintained.  In the early stages of putting together the story, the customer and his boss had actually agreed to talk to Nick.  Like many others, they made the decision that crossing Apple was more trouble than it was worth so they eventually declined to be interviewed.

This morning I got a note from someone still at Apple challenging the description of the customer as "miffed."  It's human nature to interpret things differently depending on your situation.  If you're still at Apple, some part of you might want to believe that this high level customer didn't have a problem spending time getting a non-disclosure agreement through his legal folks  and also forking out money to fly to Cupertino for a non-disclosure that turned out to be a farce.

Since the customer is still a good friend, and I had a pretty good idea of his feelings, I ended up being comfortable with the reporter's choice of the word "miffed."

I was even more pleased to get a note from the customer which reaffirmed that the choice was okay.

Anonymity is a nice feature in this case. Thanks for that. There was some amount of miffed, perplexed and amused in the person's head on Monday.

Given the rolling of the dice that you do when talking with any reporter, I'm pretty pleased that most things ended up right even though I left Apple in July 2004 instead of last year as was reported in the article.  The trust I placed in Nick Wingfield wasn't misplaced.  He did as good a job as you can do getting the facts right in what is sometimes an imprecise world.

On another lighter but potentially deadlier note, there was an AP article in Halifax Chronicle Herald this morning.  The article, "Fried Twinkies and other gourmet delights," is about a book, "The Twinkies Cookbook."  It's on special at Amazon.com for under $10.  I hope I never see any of the following, Twinkie Sushi, Pumpkin Twinkie Bread Pudding or Twinkie Burritos.  The thought of Twinkie Burritos is especially scary.  If you are too afraid of the book to order it, the article has a recipe for Twinkie Cherry Pie.

I guess if there is good news in this, it has to be in the article, "Harmful trans fats vanish from snacks, lurk in fast food."  The article might mean that the Twinkie Cherry Pie is better for you that the regular pie you pick up at the grocery store.

Whether you're partial to Oreos, Twinkies or other packaged foods, you'd be hard-pressed these days to find any that contain trans fats, the notoriously artery-clogging fats long demonized by the food police.

But while trans fats are increasingly hard to find on supermarket shelves, they still reign in fast foods and some restaurant dishes.

I think I'll stick to Zorba's salads for lunch.

On being part of a WSJ article

A couple of years ago when Apple and I parted company, I didn't have a clue that I would end up part of a Wall Street Journal article,  "At Apple, Secrecy Complicates Life But Maintains Buzz."

Yet my blog, "Applepeels," brought me to the attention of Nick Wingfield, a Wall Street Journal reporter.  Over the course of a few months, I steered a number of people to Nick.  Mostly these were people who had tried hard over the years to make Apple successful in their enterprises.  Some of them were former Apple employees who worked hard to sell Apple products to markets where Apple wanted piles of revenue without making any commitments to customers.

One thing really surprised me in the whole effort to get the story out on Apple's strange dance with enterprise customers.  It was the fear of Apple that customers and ex-employees showed.  Most were afraid to talk to Nick.  Some were afraid that somehow Apple would do something to them.  There were some who had legitimate worries that current employers would face problems with Apple, but mostly people just didn't want to risk the wrath of Steve or were trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and Apple.  That comes as no surprise to those of us who worked for years at Apple. Many ex-employees have wounds from their years at Apple and have no interest in reopening them.

I don't own any Apple stock, and mostly I'm interested in people knowing that Apple isn't the workers' paradise that many on the outside believe.  There's a real dark side to Apple.  You can read one episode of it in the post which detailed the reason I'm no longer at Apple, "COLSA, my final Apple chapter."

Apple certainly isn't the only corporation with a dark side, but it is the one I know so I feel the same obligation to tell the truth about Apple as I do about tell the truth about the problems I had with my Volvo in "High tech car, low tech dealer."

We live in a world drenched with marketing designed to make us buy what companies want us to buy.  Often new employees fight to get jobs with high flying corporations only to be ground up and spit out when the corporations no longer have use for them. Using blogs to get the truth out or  at least to get the information noticed by more traditional media is one of the benefits of having freedom of speech.  Telling the truth should set us free.  Well written blogs help to make that happen.

If we are to be a competitive in this century, we need more than just great products.  We need great companies that treat their employees well.  The only way that will happen is if we keep having newspaper articles like the one Nick wrote.  Those articles shine a little light inside the corporate fortresses.  They keep the public informed.

The question is not whether or not Apple has been successful, the question is if they have the right plans in place to be a long term success, and if they do right by their employees, shareholders, and customers.

Apple makes great products.  I'm waiting for my new MacBook even as I write this.  I believe it will be a great product. Still Apple, the company, can  perform better for its employees, customers, and shareholders.  Getting rid of a little of the misplaced secrecy that Nick Wingfield talks about would be a good start. 

Even the financial analyst, Herb Greenberg, thinks Apple holds its cards a little close to the vest.  You can check out his article, "Behind one analyst's 'sell' on Apple."

I don't plan to hide either my love of Apple products or my distaste for some of Apple's practices.  If I happen to help a few folks make intelligent decisions on employment, investment, or even on the computer they use, I'll feel that my efforts will have been well rewarded even if they are slightly conflicted.

The company isn't so bad that I'm willing to torture myself with a bad computer, but it may get to that point.

Update on falling river levels

I stopped by the Roanoke River Park on Route 419 after dinner this evening.

The picnic table which had water lapping at its edges is a long way from the water today.

I did notice that just in this park, five large trees along the river banks had toppled into the river after the soaking we got.  I'm sure the fish will like the breaks in the current.

It always amazes me to see how fast the water rises and how quickly it drops.  We got another half inch of rain in a quick thunderstorm this evening.  That puts our three days total at six inches.

Below is a picture from yesterday of the same picnic table.   Sorry it wasn't from the same angle, but I sure you get the general picture.