Since then, the high-tech sector took a dive and naysayers jumped on their soapboxes. Add 25,000 dealer employees to the contract. Focus on the bottom line and sign deals for another 370,000 new systems. Our pilot distribution program is under way in Europe, and employees are as excited about the program there as they have been in North America. Steve Paschen, director of the Model E initiative at Ford, says the program may be up to about 400,000 computers worldwide.
Numbers go up and down.
The program is designed strictly for employees and their households, but he says it is a big topic of conversation during recruiting. Giant projects depend on strong partners, and PeoplePC contacted all the major PC vendors before signing Hewlett-Packard as its partner. John Benardino, business development manager at HP, fought to overcome the fact that HP had never sold to PeoplePC before the Ford contract. But HP did not price itself out of a profit. I don't think this should be viewed any differently from any other channel.