Rick And Joe Inatome

Rick was one of the founding fathers of the franchising model, which helped aggregate individual storefronts into a national network of corporate resellers. "Rick was one of the early visionaries in the industry," said David R. Dukes, chairman of the Global Technology Distribution Council. "He understood how to play the game and the value of [PC vendor] medallions. He leveraged, particularly the IBM [Corp.] medallions, into a large company-owned and franchise chain."

Moreover, Rick realized the value of size and scale when dealing with the vendors, said Dukes. "He understood the value of what dealers brought to the table and leveraged that into a partnership."

But my how the rules have changed. Twenty years ago, Rick grew up on 35-point hardware margins. Today, he gives the hardware away. ZapMe gives computer labs and free Internet access to schools. The company's revenue comes from corporate sponsors that provide content to the ZapMe network.

Just as Rick has prepared to reminisce about the old days, he quickly makes a note to himself to talk with brokerage firm partners about adding new content related to the stock market games played by middle school and high school students.

Having ideas this early in the morning is out of character for Rick. "Rick is the ultimate night person," said Dukes, who worked as an Inacomp regional manager in the 1980s. "He would hit his stride about noon. Our managers' meeting would never start until after noon and sometimes go until 2 or 3 in the morning." Dukes, a morning person, calls this insanity.

"I was president of the first Microsoft dealer council," Rick said. "We used to meet at Bill Gates' house and then take a break and jump on his trampoline in the backyard."

But more important than the fun and games and the camaraderie swirling around the new personal computer industry back then, Rick and Joe Inatome were there at the beginning to mix the builders with the sellers to create the new alchemy called the channel.

"At the time [the late 1970s], dealers were running companies that were equal in size or larger than the vendors," Rick recalled. "The vendors realized early on that they needed the dealers, and our insights became the keys to their success. At the time, manufacturers were more into the technology. The dealers, because we had all this experience with retail customers, were telling the vendors what the technology should look like, what software to use."

It was at an Apple dealer council meeting that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs first mentioned the company was thinking about manufacturing a laser printer. Rick and the other dealers immediately coined the term "desktop publishing." Rick also encouraged the Apple II development team to pursue their efforts to develop a graphical user interface.

But Rick would not have been in the center of a new industry in the making were it not for his father, Joe. In April 1976, the senior Inatome, then the head of his own engineering firm, Inatome & Associates, saw an ad in a magazine for Ed Roberts' computer kit, the Altair 8800. Joe bought one and had Rick assemble it for him.

Then other engineers in his company wanted one of the new PCs, so Rick assembled those systems as well. When Rick graduated from Michigan State University in June 1976, he had the choice of either taking a job as a broker for IDS American Express or going to work for his father assembling and selling PCs. He chose the latter, and they started Computer Mart Inc. in Troy, Mich. The company grossed $1 million in its first year and $5 million its second.

When one of his employees wanted to move to Saginaw, Mich., Rick wrote up a one-page franchising agreement and began franchising and distributing products to his franchisees.

Computer Mart was the first PC dealer to hit $1 million in sales per month, Rick said. And the company, which would change its name to Inacomp Computer Centers in the early 1980s, was a pioneer in outbound sales,first to K-12 schools and later, after being named one of the 16 initial dealers for the IBM PC, to sell into corporations.

By the late 1980s, Inacomp had leveraged its relationships with IBM, Apple and Compaq into a $500-million-a year business. But Joe had bigger plans. Joe used his clout with the vendors to negotiate contracts that for the first time brought IBM, Apple and Compaq into the superstore channel with a new venture called Computer City in Garden Grove, Calif.

"Both Joe and Rick recognized the amount of rapid change in the industry. Joe is the most visionary person I know. He has the ability to look past the horizon and stay ahead of things," said Mike Rusert, vice president of operations at Canon Computer Systems, Costa Mesa, Calif., and one of Inacomp Computer Center's original franchisees.

But Rick concedes that he and his father were not always bulletproof when it came to predicting the future. "Microsoft in the early days was selling a lot of Apple 16K memory," Rick said. "I told Bill Gates to concentrate on hardware and that there was no future selling software. He never took my advice."