ComputerLand Commercial "Growing a Business"

Launched by Ed Millard in 1974 as an enterprise selling "build-your-own" kit computers, the compnay that would become ComputerLand entered the retail business in Hayward under the name Computer Shack. The name was changed to ComputerLand in 1977, and using a franchise-ownership model, the company expanded rapidly.

ComputerLand was one of the three retailers IBM chose to sell the IBM PC in 1981. The match worked well, and by 1985, ComputerLand had grown to 800 locations, including 200 outside the United States,. In the process, Millard became a billionaire. The stores were once common in strip malls in busy commercial districts.

BY the mid-1980s, personal computers were becoming a mass-market commodity thanks to "clones" and lower-cost manufacturers. On the retail side, big names like CompUSA, Best Buy and Circuit City had entered the game.

A few months after these commercials aired, Millard sold ComputerLand. The name was changed to Vanstar and eventually, the parent company filed for bankruptcy.

These commercials were found on a reel of audiotape in the archives of the Bay Area Radio Museum and Hall of Fame and converted to digitial files by volunteer Andrew Welburn.