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Dear Customers,
With the end of 2009 and the holidays of Christmas and New Year's quickly approaching, I would like to express my appreciation to my employees, our customers, our vendors, and our overall community. Together, we have all fought against the effects of the economic crisis that has faced us and all of us have contributed to our collective survival during these difficult times.
As you know, Central Computers started in Silicon Valley and grew into other parts of the Bay Area. Many of our high-volume customers are large high-tech companies such as Intel, IBM, HP, Cisco, and AMD, which are also our suppliers. When the recession hit the Silicon Valley, companies of all sizes almost immediately responded by cutting personnel and greatly reducing their spending. Our sales volume with such corporate customers suddenly dropped by 50%.
Thanks to the efforts of our dedicated employees at Central, we were able to quickly make changes in order to adapt to the new conditions. We grew our technical service business, especially laptop repair. The rationale, as we saw it, was that if people don't have the money to purchase new machines, they will be spending lesser amounts to repair and upgrade their old machines. In addition, we did our best to keep raising our profile in the general retail market to make up for losses in corporate sales. With so many people losing their jobs or saving money in fear of being laid off, we understood we needed to present great value to our customers. So we concentrated on dropping prices where we could and even ran free sales tax sales to bolster our revenues. Strategically, we also expanded and improved our program for directly importing high-tech products from China. By purchasing directly, we are able to get better prices and we then pass on the savings to our customers.
Our biggest concern, all this time, has been the welfare of our own employees. We have never laid off a single employee in our entire 25 year history and we have fought hard to keep this the case. We have been especially motivated at this time, because we know how hard it is for a laid-off worker to find a new job. We have managed, this year, to successfully stand behind our deep commitment to our employees, with zero layoffs.
Dear customers, because of your support, Central has survived in this difficult economy - unlike some stores, such as Circuit City, which was entirely wiped out by the present crisis. Economists are now talking about economic recovery, which we are hopeful for. But they also speak of a very slow recovery, which we consider warily. No matter what, in the New Year, we will continue to offer our customers low prices and high levels of customer service. We also are actively searching for new locations for more stores and carrying out plans to expand our technical services - all to increase our ability to better serve you and justify your patronage of us for all these years.
Saul Yeung
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