CompuServe Messages

Chuck: I assume that you're talking about my February editorial "Chinese Firedrill." I've thought about the dealer question many times in the past year and spoke at length about it with a number of people when I did the interviews with Malcolm Davies and Scott Bentley in the November issue. When you look at the history of Autodesk, the company certainly didn't start out with a plan to sell its software only through authorized dealers. When Autodesk first started, the major store chains like Computerland and MicroAge wouldn't stock AutoCAD. But individuals started calling Autodesk to order the software and many became dealers. Some of them included individual Computerland and MicroAge stores. Autodesk's dealer network was born and the company has worked and struggled with it ever since. The dealer network is seen as one of the company's great assets, but it is also a liability in much the same way that a large installed base is both an asset and a liability. It becomes increasingly difficult to make a major change under the weight of the installed base (or the vested interest in the dealer network). If AutoCAD were to become more of a mass-market product (ie. if the price were dropped significantly and the product sold through wider distribution) many existing dealers would find that they had lost their mandate to exist in their present forms. But many would find that their role had changed to that of a CAD consultant, able to combine the various pieces of hardware and the wealth of third-party software to make a complete AutoCAD system. They could become a much more vital part of a company's CAD strategy, in much the same way as a lawyer or CPA is an important part of any company's string of outside consultants. By being removed from the dollars spent on the actual hardware and software, their actual consulting would become more viable. Of course, they would then be selling a more limited commodity, their time. But they would no longer have to grouse about the shrinking margins in hardware and software. I think the good ones, the dealers with real CAD knowledge, who became more expert in their clients' needs, would be in great demand. Just a thought. David