What Sets Us Apart. The direct model eliminates retailers or other resellers that add unnecessary time and cost, or can diminish Dell's understanding of customer expectations. With the industry's most efficient procurement, manufacturing and distribution process, Dell offers its customers powerful, richly-configured systems at competitive prices. Every Dell system is built to order.
Customers get exactly what they want.
Dell turns over inventory every five days on average, keeping related costs low. Since Dell's initial public offering, its stock has appreciated about 29,000 percent. Balancing Liquidity, Profitability and Growth Dell's high return to shareholders has been the result of a focused effort over time to balance growth with profitability and liquidity. Dell has consistently led its largest competitors in each of those categories, and did so again in fiscal-year 2001, even as the company further expanded its infrastructure to support significant growth around the world. Today, Dell operates one of the highest volume Internet commerce sites in the world, based on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating systems.