Damien Hirst has surprised the art world again by announcing that he will reignite his relationship with Parisian gallerist, Emmanuel Perrotin, who in 1991, was one of the first two dealers to exhibit the artist. Perrotin considers Hirst to be an old friend and claims to be the only dealer to never profit from Hirst’s stardom. It is too early to tell, but it is suggested that a solo exhibition will be scheduled for 2010, but neither Hirst nor Perrotin have indicated if this is the beginning of a longer lasting artist-dealer relationship. Perrotin and Hirst’s partnership comes after Hirst’s infamous Sotheby’s auction, “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever,” previously covered by AO here in which noted art critic Robert Hughes accused Hirst of cutting dealers out of the action. “Everyone has written that Hirst wanted to bite the hand that fed him,” says Perrotin. “But there’s a difference between asserting independence and turning your back on dealers.” Whether Hirst is playing a well-calculated ironic card out of his ever-evolving deck or simply scratching the back that once scratched his own is still to be seen.
Dell Shake-Up Analysis
Analyst Wire February 1, 2007 MICHELLE CARUSO-CABRERA, CNBC ANCHOR: So what a difference a Dell (DELL) makes. Michael Dell announcing he will once again run the company he founded and the shares rally in after-hours. Can he do for Dell what Steve Jobs did for Apple (AAPL)? We are joined now by Chris Green, editor at IT Pro magazine. here dell coupon code
Chris, good to see you.
CHRIS GREEN, EDITOR, IT PRO: Hello there.
CARUSO-CABRERA: You have met Michael Dell many, many times. Tell me, what do you think, can he really turn this company around again?
GREEN: Well, he is absolutely a visionary in the industry. And he is the man who is singularly responsible for the building the whole direct model that Dell is all about. He was the guy that revolutionized the way that PCs are sold, taking them out of traditional retailers and what we call the channel, and actually going straight to the consumers and straight to the businesses directly, cutting out the middleman and cutting the prices. So, I mean, he definitely does have the big-picture view of how to sell computers.
CARUSO-CABRERA: What is on his to-do list right now? What is the first thing he has got to get done?
GREEN: Well, the first thing he has got to address is Dell`s sliding profits and sliding market share. Dell has for many years been the leading retailer of PCs by units sold, globally. However, he has lost that number one position to HP (HPQ). It is also suffering price pressures at the moment from other, smaller niche players, a great example is Lenovo, who has put a lot of pressure on Dell at the moment, certainly in the laptop market. He is going to have to address that pressure in the marketplace. There are also bits and pieces that he has going to have to look at, in particular, Dell`s particularly poor reputation for customer service.
ROSS WESTGATE, CNBC ANCHOR: Chris, Dell and Apple at one time both used to have the word “computer” in their title. They no longer do. Steve Jobs revived Apple by sort of not doing it in the computer space, if you like. I mean, is that option open here for Michael Dell?
GREEN: If anything, we are actually going to see the complete opposite from Dell. I mean, Dell has actually been pushing more into that consumer electronics space for the last couple of years. I mean, under the stewardship of Kevin Rollins, we have seen them diversify into things like printers, digital cameras, even plasma TVs, which was always (ph) a bit of a strange move. Obviously there are some certain technological synergies in selling flat-screen televisions. But the fact is, if you are a consumer and you are going to buy a TV, then you are going to go off to the likes of (INAUDIBLE) or (INAUDIBLE) or Best Buy (BBY) or someone like that. You are not going to Dell. So that the current situation the company has, is it has this wide consumer electronics portfolio but it is a huge and disparate selection of products, whereas Apple on the other hand went into consumer electronics successfully by keeping the product range small, tight and focused. So if anything, we are going to see Dell really retrenching from some of that market just so it can get on top of its product range.
CHRISTINE TAN, CNBC ANCHOR: Chris, Christine here. You mentioned about Lenovo. Now no one knows more about the low-cost model than Lenovo. How big a threat is Lenovo to Dell?
GREEN: Potentially it is enormous. I mean, we have already seen Lenovo making great steps forward in the laptop market. And the laptop market is the biggest-growing sector in the PC industry. Sales of desktop PCs have been in decline for several years now. We don`t expect the launch of Windows Vista to have any material effect on the sale of desktop PCs. However, we do expect laptop PCs, which have been growing for the last five years now, to continue growing at quite a significant rate. We expect some double-digit growth to continue for at least the next three to five years in that market. People are looking for smaller, more portable, more fashionable (INAUDIBLE) styles of computers. Lenovo is particularly well- placed in that market following the acquisition of the personal computer division from IBM (IBM), which gave it access to the highly-popular and well-respected ThinkPad line of products. These were particularly popular among businesses. They also have a growing legion of fans in the consumer market. see here dell coupon code
WESTGATE: Chris, obviously, that sort of — we are obviously very focused on the future, I just have one question, though. Why couldn`t Dell move on without Michael Dell?
GREEN: Well, potentially they could though, but the thing that they are — that they face at the moment is that in the last couple of years, under the rule of Kevin Rollins as CEO, obviously up until today, they really have struggled. They have lost focus. Really (INAUDIBLE) what Michael Dell now needs to do is he needs to really — to reinvigorate the company, restructure the management team. We do need to really expect to see some new blood coming into the business, and really to sort of get it back on a core footing, really sort of get the company back to core values, which they have really lost in the last couple of years. And certainly the market seems to suggest that they think that Michael Dell is the same man to do it. And I think there is also — there is a bit of nostalgia value. They are hoping that Michael Dell can have the same kind of effect at Dell that Steve Jobs had when he returned back to Apple.
CARUSO-CABRERA: Well, that is a very, very high bar. So he has got a lot of challenges. Chris, thanks so much.
GREEN: Thank you.
CARUSO-CABRERA: Chris Green is editor at IT Pro magazine.
END
