Gateway to Close All Retail Stores

4 Apr, 2004 at 5:49pm ET Article published in Tech

It has been reported that [b]Gateway[/b] is to close all of its retail stores, cutting 2,500 jobs.

[blockquote]The company has posted only one profitable quarter over the past three-plus years and has gradually cut its store count from a peak of 322. Gateway has slashed its work force from nearly 25,000 in 2000, and will have about 4,000 employees after the cuts take effect.
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[link=http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,115913,00.html][b]The full story[/b][/link] – [i]Submitted by[/i] profdlp

Comments

4 Apr 2004 ~ 6:01pm Leonardo I went in to one of their stores once just out of curiosity. What a wasteland it was - large floorspace with very little hardware. There were just a few machines displayed on tables with glossy Gateway propoganda (marketing) brochures beside the machines. I was also surprised that the store had very few accessories available for sale - drives, speakers, keyboards, mice, et cetera. I remember thinking to myself, "How's this place ever going to make enough money to even pay for the overhead?" Guess my question was answered.

BTW, anyone know what impact the Apple sections in CompUSA stores have had for Apple? They usually seem to have plenty of people browsing the equipment.
4 Apr 2004 ~ 7:35pm ginipig

What a wasteland it was - large floorspace with very little hardware. There were just a few machines displayed on tables with glossy Gateway propoganda (marketing) brochures beside the machines.

I used to work at Office.Max while I was in Highschool. I remember the Gateway.Salesperson finding innovative ways to pass time. He wasn't exactly a lazy person; he had no customers (ever) to deal with. His post was filled with brochures and lifesize pictures of "what you'd get if you purchased a puter here."

I must admit though, that were it not for the decline in demand for Gateway computers, I would've had a horrible time working @ Officemax.
4 Apr 2004 ~ 7:47pm Leonardo

were it not for the decline in demand for Gateway computers, I would've had a horrible time working @ Officemax

Huh? What, you mean you would've been tempted to steer potential Gateway customers towards something else?
4 Apr 2004 ~ 9:17pm RWB I went into a Gateway store before, it was all dressed up and I could _FEEL_ the expencive nature of it all, so me and my brother played Carmageddon 2 while we were there... One of the PC's had it installed
4 Apr 2004 ~ 11:06pm drasnor At least at the Compaq store (Radio Shack) they'll try to entice you to sign on with Verizon, even though you're just there to get a couple capacitors and a 555 timer IC for your next project.

-drasnor
4 Apr 2004 ~ 11:23pm Zero1 lol I bought from Gateway the sales person was trying to tell us how good the Gateways are it was bad, you could tell he owned a Dell or Hp lol

Their PCs are not anything to smile about trust me im an owner
4 Apr 2004 ~ 11:31pm profdlp Alright, I might as well confess. About seven years ago I almost bought one. My original rig (from 1995) had run out of upgrade room and I was looking for a replacement.

What inspired this madness? The reviews in all of the Ziff-Davis magazines that extolled their wondrous powers.

Fortunately I had a friend who pointed out that Gateway was one of the heaviest advertisers in those mags and asked me if it was likely that Z-D was going to bite the hand feeding them. My first completely home-built rig followed soon after and I never looked back.

If I had a nickel for every one of those old Gateway full-tower jobs that I've worked on I could buy an Athlon 64 setup.
4 Apr 2004 ~ 11:36pm drasnor I've got a Gateway2000 keyboard at home. I don't suppose it counts, but if not for the L-shaped Enter key it'd be an outstanding keyboard. It's a Gateway AnyKey macro keyboard with the 8-way D-pad and keyboard-level macros (hold the macro program key, hammer out a key sequence, then assign it to a key. Press the access macro key and the assigned key to have it execute the macro). Fun keyboard for DOS gaming. Got it for free too, a little cleaning later and it was all better.

-drasnor
5 Apr 2004 ~ 12:03am Linc My first 'puter was a 90 Mhz P1 from Gateway in '95. Very reliable machine that we didn't have any trouble with for 5 years when we got a new system from them in 2000. That machine got a faulty IDE cable that Gateway's tech support couldn't diagnose... they sent me a new hard drive twice instead. I suppose I should thank them... taking my computer apart while talking to them on the phone is how I got into this stuff in the first place
5 Apr 2004 ~ 1:16am TheSmJ

BTW, anyone know what impact the Apple sections in CompUSA stores have had for Apple? They usually seem to have plenty of people browsing the equipment.

I can tell you that they have been selling well (at least in the store I worked at they did). The salesmen liked to sell them cause they were so freakin' expensive, and thus got a large cut of the profit.

HP, Dell, and eMachine were very ticked off at Comp when they started the "Apple Shop" (the name for the store's Apple section) because apparently they've noticed a decent drop in profit.
5 Apr 2004 ~ 3:57am ryko I am in the same boat as general keebler.......my first computer was a gateway pII 400mhz, 64mb pc100, 10.0gb hdd, dvd-rom, 8mb ati rage pro, etc............ It was a high school graduation gift from my parents.

Well the psu decided to crap out on me after only a year, and after a lengthy ordeal with their service department (about 2 weeks) in which nothing was accomplished, i decided to try and figure out what was wrong by myself and demanded my machine back. The nice thing is that the had already diagnosed the problem as a faulty psu, so the hard part for a noob was already taken care of.

One 64mb stick of pc100 and a 200w replacement psu later, and my pc addiction was born. I suppose i should thank them!
6 Apr 2004 ~ 7:21pm ginipig

Leonardo wrote:

Huh? What, you mean you would've been tempted to steer potential Gateway customers towards something else?

Nope, the Gateway booth had some high quality tweeters and woofers. I'd always convince the gateway rep to play some wicked beats. As a matter of fact, I developed my mixing skills at that booth. Such fond memories
6 Apr 2004 ~ 7:24pm Al_Capown I've never really bought any hardware from them. My dad might have a while back.

I've got no gripes with them though, I was actually pretty happy with them when they had that 9800Pro for $189 shipped. Got it for my cousin and it was a BBA full Retail. Came with some nice samsung ram too.