If you’re wondering why blue-chip computermakers like IBM are struggling, look no further than the modest offices of Hayden’s CompuAdd, where bare-bones operations and turn-on-a-dime agility produce inexpensive PCs. As computers become a commodity, there is less to distinguish them-so nimble companies like CompuAdd prosper because low prices and good service mean more than a big name. That formula has catapulted Hayden into the big leagues: in November Hayden beat giants like IBM to snag half of a billion-dollar Air Force contract.
Hayden is sole owner of this burgeoning computer empire, which may produce $1 billion in sales this year. Born in tiny Floresville, Texas, he was raised on a farm, moved up the road to Austin for college and stayed. “This is about as far north as I want to live,” Hayden says. Married with two kids, he’s also active in his church, teaching Sunday school.
In 1981 he left his job as a Texas Instruments engineer to follow his entrepreneurial spirit and launched CompuAdd in April 1982. Hayden made his first sale in June ‘82 after running a small ad in a computer magazine. By September he was selling $30,000 worth of computer equipment monthly. Soon after, Hayden, working out of a dingy office called “the cave,” expanded into PC manufacturing and retailing.
Today the boss rarely wears a tie to work, but Hayden is all business, commonly spending 12 hours a day on the job. He roams the halls and drops in on employees to talk about their projects. He is relentlessly practical; though he owned a Mercedes, Hayden quickly traded it in for a Bronco with plenty of cargo space.
That streak runs through CompuAdd, too. Hayden keeps the organization small-only a dozen managers run the 1,500-employee operation. No one has a secretary, not even Hayden. He makes the big decisions solo. Last June he returned from vacation and shocked his employees by announcing a major reorganization: he split off the mail-order business into a separate entity. As each division grows to the point where it threatens to become inefficient, Hayden will spin off that segment into a more manageable company. Such flexibility allows the company to move quickly. For example: in December 1990 the Defense Department rush-ordered $30 million worth of computers for Operation Desert Shield. Hayden overhauled manufacturing lines and persuaded workers to put in lots of overtime; the computers arrived in Saudi Arabia on time.
The rest of the computer industry is learning from the upstart-but fighting it, too. IBM, among others, filed a protest challenging CompuAdd’s receipt of the Air Force contract. Now that the firm has landed its megadeal, can it deliver? “There’s a little bit of uneasiness about a company as small as CompuAdd being able to handle a deal of this magnitude,” says analyst Joe Ann Stahel. But if Hayden pulls off the Air Force contract CompuAdd will become an industry giant, too. And that will make Hayden’s Chevette-driving days finally seem like a distant memory.
