Gateway Abandons Direct Sales

In an unusual move, Acer subsidiary Gateway has announced it is abandoning direct online and phone sales.

Remember the days when companies couldn’t move fast enough to offer their products for sale online? For some, the tide now seems to be sweeping the other direction. Acer subsidiary Gateway announced today that it plans to abandon direct online and phone-based sales and to shift its sales and distribution model entirely to retailers, e-tailers, and other channel partners. Gateway says the shift will enable the company to simplify its business model. Gateway retailers will include Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Costco, NewEgg, Office Depot, OfficeMax, and—of course—Wal-mart.

"Customers can rest assured that they will continue to get the award-winning products and outstanding technical support they’ve come to expect from Gateway for the last 23 years," said Acer Group’s U.S. general manager Mark Hill, in a statement.

Gateway says focusing on an indirect sales model brings the company more in line with Acer’s "successful" global brand strategy, which has relied entirely on indirect sales through channel partners rather than direct sales to consumers. Gateway hopes that as the only major PC maker in the U.S. without a direct sales channel, retail and channel partners will prefer to work with Gateway because the company itself isn’t competing with them for sales, and Gateway can focus entirely on the needs of its partners.