IBM Product Center was an American

retail Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is the sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholes ...

er wholly owned by

International Business Machines International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

that sold the company's office equipment, which consisted at the time mostly of

photocopier A photocopier (also called copier or copy machine, and formerly Xerox machine, the generic trademark) is a machine that makes copies of documents and other visual images onto paper or plastic film quickly and cheaply. Most modern photocopiers ...

typewriter A typewriter is a Machine, mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of Button (control), keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an i ...

s and

personal computer A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...

s. The first store opened in 1980 in downtown

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

, Pennsylvania.

History

The Product Center ran concurrent with IBM's Business Computer Centers, which were demonstration and training centers for the company's products established in the 1920s. While these Business Computer Centers were aimed at small and large businesses alike, the Product Centers were aimed chiefly to market IBM's lower-cost office equipment at small businesses and home office buyers. The Product Centers featured bright red carpet and ceiling speakers that played pop music. Its flagship Philadelphia store in 1981 sold just 17 products: several models of

word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Early word processors were stand-alone devices dedicated to the function, but current word ...

s and

s, a POS cash register, a

dictation machine A dictation machine is a sound recording device most commonly used to record Speech communication, speech for playback or to be typed into print. It includes digital voice recorders and tape recorder. The name "Dictaphone" is a trademark of the ...

, a Series III

(the Product Center's most expensive product at the time, which retailed $39,000—$ in ) and the newly-released

IBM Personal Computer The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible ''de facto'' standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a ...

. The IBM PC proved so desirable that it warranted its own table display in the back of the store. The Product Centers later stocked other companies'

peripheral A peripheral device, or simply peripheral, is an auxiliary hardware device that a computer uses to transfer information externally. A peripheral is a hardware component that is accessible to and controlled by a computer but is not a core compo ...

s for IBM's machines, such as

Tecmar Tecmar Inc. was an American manufacturer of personal computer enhancement products based in Solon, Ohio. The company was founded in 1974 by Martin Alpert, M.D., and Carolyn Alpert. The company's first products were computerized medical equipmen ...

tape drive A tape drive is a data storage device that reads and writes data on a magnetic tape. Magnetic-tape data storage is typically used for offline, archival data storage. Tape media generally has a favorable unit cost and long archival stability. ...

add-ons for the IBM PC. Three locations had opened by mid-1981, in Philadelphia,

Baltimore Baltimore is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the 30th-most populous U.S. city. The Baltimore metropolitan area is the 20th-large ...

, and

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

. By 1986, there were 81 locations, 13 of which were in California. In April of that year, IBM sold all their stores to

Nynex NYNEX Corporation was an American telephone company that served five states of New England (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont) as well as most of the state of New York from January 1, 1984 to August 14, 1997. Histo ...

, a company that had spun off from the breakup of

AT&T AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...

in 1984. IBM cited low sales compared to their independent authorized computer dealers in their decision to sell the locations. The existence of the Product Centers had apparently been causing friction with these independent dealers, though IBM had not participated in the fierce

price war A price war is a form of market competition in which companies within an industry engage in aggressive pricing activity "characterized by the repeated cutting of prices below those of competitors". This leads to a cycle, where each competitor att ...

s over IBM's products that the dealers were fighting among themselves. In the words of economist Leonard J. Parsons, who had been evaluating the performance of the Retail Centers for a research article in the years before it closed, "IBM decided that it was a technology company, not a retailer". Nynex renamed these locations as Nynex Business Centers and combined their inventory of IBM products with its own

telecommunications Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communication technologies. These means of ...

equipment.

History

See also

References

Further reading