From the desk of Vonda Del Lans
To our valued customers:
Ever since the turn of the century, when my great-grandfather sold his first zip drive from a pushcart in New York City’s Lower East Side, our computer peripherals outlets have built relationships with our customers one microchip at a time.
Throughout the years, we have expanded our distribution channels from street-side retail into catalogs, telemarketing, e-mail marketing and other online options. But we never forgot our roots, and our flagship pushcart on Orchard Street has proudly met the computing needs of generations of immigrants from as far away as the shtetls of Europe, the gulags of the former Soviet Union and Iowa.
Recent developments, however, have lead to substantial changes in our business model. Heightened regulation and rising materials costs have eaten away at the profitability of our traditional marketing channels. To cut our overhead, we have progressively moved our suppliers, our support staff and our executives to countries known for low-cost capital resources.
But these efforts weren’t enough, as our shareholders demanded ever-widening margins. In recent months we came to the sad realization that there was only one element of the sales process left to outsource: Our customers.
Hence, this announcement. Effective immediately, we will no longer service individuals or companies located within the United States.
As our call centers are already based in the high-growth regions we plan to target, we no longer need to retain bilingual customer service representatives. We hope to realize additional cost savings by finally moving to monolingual support staffs. It doesn’t happen to be the language we originally anticipated, but following Darwin, we chose to adapt rather than die.
Ultimately, there is one incontrovertible reason why we are focusing on these markets: With the exodus of jobs to these countries, consumers there are the only ones with money to buy our wares.
We thank you for your support throughout these years. Should you people ever make it to our shores, look us up.
Vonda Del Lans
Commerce and Sales Secretary
I.B. Hamish’s Pushcart Peripherals
To respond to the opinions in this column, please contact rlevey@primediabusiness.com
