It seem like so long ago, but once upon a time, Gateway was one of the darlings of the early direct-sales model. They were exceedingly competitive with the likes of Dell through the P2/P3 era and instrumental in the whole paradigm of ordering custom-configured computers first over the phone and later over the web.
Gateway, now a subsidiary of Acer, has floundered tremendously in the last few years. The idea of selling product directly and indirectly through Gateway Country stores floundered and they had begun selling through retail and e-tail channels.
This weekend, Gateway announced that they're giving up entirely on direct sales, and going to a 100% pre-configured, non-customized sales model. Last week, buying a pre-configured computer at 'retail' was just an option if you wanted a Gateway. Now, you get a choice of pre-configured systems and no more.
I'm going to call this one as a bad move, even if there are massive cost-savings that can be passed down to consumers. They're basically giving up on the business markets and high-end prosumer, leaving the low-margin "plain old computer" buyer.
Good luck, Gateway...
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