The next day was Monday, when Ivan Adolf, CEO of the American retail giant Sears Co., visited us. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

In this era of "channel is king", Apple has to rely on Sears!

Tian Shuai talked with him for more than an hour, and the two sides reached a cooperation agreement. Apple-ll PCs can be sold at Sears retail stores, but Sears must pay $200 for each machine sold. If you sell 100,000 machines, that's $20 million, which was a lot of money in 1975!

But there is no way, Apple does not have its own sales channels.

Before you become strong, there are some things that you have to endure.

Apple's flagship store in Los Angeles is Apple's first step in establishing its own channels! Li Zetian found that it cost a lot of money to build a flagship store, so he did not let Apple not blindly expand, but first took this flagship store as a pilot project, and if it was successful, it was quickly promoted, with New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, and other major cities in the United States as the first batch of targets.

With your own flagship store, you not only have channels, but also after-sales can be guaranteed!

Only by doing a good job after sale can we retain customers!

At present, Apple's main users are a group of computer enthusiasts and enterprises, all of whom have certain technical capabilities, so the demand for after-sales is relatively small, and they are generally contacted by telephone

Tian Shuai followed Li Zetian's suggestion and immediately contacted Wal-Mart after Sears negotiated cooperation.

In 1972, Wal-Mart was listed in New York, and its value increased 4,900-fold in the next 25 years (by 1999), and if Apple had taken a stake in Wal-Mart in 1975, let alone formed an alliance with Wal-Mart, it would have been worth the investment.

At noon, Tian Shuai and Li Zetian talked about Wal-Mart when they had lunch together in the company cafeteria.

"Mr. li, I expressed my intention to cooperate with Wal-Mart, and the other party agreed, hoping to attract popularity with Apple-ll high-tech products. ”

Li Zetian nodded when he heard this, and then asked, "Do you agree to Apple's share?"

Wal-Mart went public in 1972 to raise funds, and there was no shortage of funds, and their company's own cash flow was huge, so there was no need for financing, so they did not accept Apple's shareholding request. If we want to get a stake in Wal-Mart, we can only buy outstanding shares from the stock market!"

Li Zetian pondered for a while, since Wal-Mart does not accept shares, then forget it, and being able to cooperate can be regarded as achieving the goal. At present, Apple does not have much money, and the so-called "greedy and chewing too much" is better to develop Apple with peace of mind and quickly establish a flagship store! Of course, if you have spare money, you might as well go to the stock market and buy Wal-Mart shares.

……

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At the end of March, AT&T sent an inspection team, and there is no doubt that they were shocked after seeing Apple-ll and Excel, and said on the spot that they would persuade the company to buy it.

On April 1st, a strange man came to Apple, adding a touch of color to Li Zetian's peaceful life.

He called himself Gary Kildare, in his thirties, received a Ph.D. in computer science from HSD University in 1972, and in 1974, he helped create the most famous "home brewing club" in Silicon Valley, which became a paradise for computer amateurs.

Gary Kildare is a technology god who can be compared with Wozniak, and in 1973 he first created the Disk Operating System (DOS), named CP/M operating system, but at this time, the CP/M operating system was not mature enough, at most it was an "embryo", so it was quite neglected, and the computer industry turned a deaf ear to it!

In his previous life, Gary Kildare completed a complete set of CP/M application systems in 1975, and since then, the system has been adopted by microcomputer manufacturers around the world, and the software around him has also been developed explosively. Subsequently, CP/M became red and purple, fabulously popularized, and dominated the 8-bit microcomputer, and was revered as the "standard 8-bit software bus", and Dr. Gary Kildare became famous ever since!

In fact, Gary Kildare had the opportunity to become the richest man in the world, but he missed out on the biggest business of his life.

Due to the unusually popular CP/M operating system, IBM was the first to find him, but he didn't pay attention to it and asked his wife to negotiate with IBM representatives, but the talks collapsed. Then, Bill Gates took over the business. Microsoft's later MS-DOS operating system is almost completely copied from the CP/M operating system, the system functions are almost identical, and even the instructions are exactly the same as the CP/M, and the BIOS program in it is almost always copied from Gary Kildare's CP/M BIOS.

It can be said that Bill Gates made his fortune by copying Kildare!

This time, Gary Kildare came to Apple to sell his CP/M operating system.

Li Zetian had a lot of thoughts in his mind, Gary Kildare didn't realize the importance of the CP/M operating system at all, but Li Zetian knew very well that Microsoft would dominate the operating system market in the future on CP/M!

Apple has obtained the license of the Unix operating system to develop the MacOS graphical interface operating system, and it will naturally not use CP/M in the future, but Microsoft does not have an operating system yet, and the BASIC interpreter is just a program, not an operating system. If Microsoft acquires the CP/M operating system together, then Apple and Microsoft will have operating systems!

"Mr. li, what do you think of the CP/M operating system, and will Apple-ll PCs work with this system?" asked Gary Kildare.

Li Zetian smiled and said, "Mr. Gary Kildare, to be honest, we have just obtained the license for the Unix operating system from AT&T, you see, this is the authorization proof agreement!"

Gary Kildare's face was not very good after reading it, and he thought that Apple-ll would use the Unix operating system.

Just when he was disappointed, Li Zetian changed his words and said: "To be honest, the CP/M system still has many defects, but it just complements Microsoft's BASIC program!"

"Gary Kildare, I wonder if you're thinking about joining Microsoft? Actually, I created both Apple and Microsoft, and if you can join Microsoft, I can consider making Apple-ll switch to the CP/M operating system! Of course, the CP/M system will also be sold to Microsoft, but I'll give you a 5% stake! By the way, I'll show you the latest software developed by Microsoft, Excel spreadsheet......"

Gary Kildare was surprised by Excel, "Mr. li, this is a great office software, it will definitely be liked by many people!"

"Yes, so, you have to know what it means for me to give you a 5% stake in Microsoft!"

"Mr. Li, I'll go back and think about it!"

"No problem!"

As soon as Gary Kildare left, Tian Shuai met him at the door.

"Mr. Li, who was that person just now?" Tian Shuai came to Li Zetian's office and asked casually.

"Gary Kildare, the inventor of the CP/M operating system!"

Tian Shuai said with a smile: "I was about to ask him for the license to use the CP/M operating system, but I didn't expect him to come first!"

Li Zetian smiled, revealing a meaningful smile......

PS: The network is stuck, and now it's just being sent, asking for a ticket and a reward!