CompuAdd’s Strategy: Divide and Conquer : Technology: The Texas computer maker is splitting into smaller units to be more responsive and competitive.

Bill Hayden is celebrating the 10th anniversary of CompuAdd Computer Corp. by breaking it up.

Hayden believes that he’s found the perfect size for his company--about $500 million in annual revenue. Since CompuAdd hit that milestone a couple years ago, the company’s owner is splitting it up so it can be, like him, lean and driven.

“It’s like planting a bunch of seeds, letting each one of the companies grow again to become a strong tree,” said Hayden, who divided his core company into two units last week, one to handle CompuAdd’s 125 retail stores and international operations, the other to pursue corporate and government sales.

Two weeks ago, CompuAdd spun off its software and systems group as a separate unit.

CompuAdd makes IBM-compatible personal computers, laptops and workstations and resells others’ peripherals, such as printers, disks and modems. It also resells software and just recently started selling Apple Macintoshes in its stores.

So far the company’s personality matches Hayden’s own. It has a workout gym. Small offices. No ties. No secretaries. Listen to the customer. Listen to the worker. And let the profits roll in.

The company hasn’t achieved the recognition of cross-town rival Dell Computer Corp. despite their similar age and sizes.

For one thing, Dell is publicly owned while CompuAdd belongs to Hayden.

But that doesn’t mean Hayden’s story isn’t as compelling as that of Dell’s chairman, 27-year-old Michael Dell, who built the business from his dorm room at the University of Texas.

Hayden, 44, grew up in Floresville, Tex., got an electrical engineering degree from the University of Texas and joined Texas Instruments Inc., where he worked on projects from the world’s fastest to the world’s smallest computer.

But he didn’t intend to stay there beyond 10 years.

“It was nothing against Texas Instruments,” Hayden said, “just I wasn’t going to be working for somebody else when I turned 40 years old.”

He quit in September, 1981, and got into speculative home investing, something he’d dabbled in during his last few years at TI.

But he saw problems looming in that business, and by April, 1982, Hayden was back in the computer business, selling computer peripherals and other add-ons (thus the name CompuAdd) by direct mail and sometimes from his car.

He opened a store when too many Austin-area consumers kept visiting his office instead of using the phone.

Now Hayden and his firm are swimming. Last year, Texas Monthly estimated his net worth at more than $450 million, making him one of the 15 richest people in Texas.

“I was just hoping to make a living,” Hayden said. “I have a feeling most people don’t have a long-term vision when they get started.

“Even now, they’ll ask ‘What’s your long-term vision?’ My vision is no further than about 18 months down the road.”

Of course, it can’t be in an industry where lightning-fast changes in technology make product life spans short and competition fierce.

“We move wherever the industry takes us,” Hayden said. “We will be wherever you can make a lot of money selling computers.”

The ability to move quickly on the big orders has given CompuAdd an edge.

When the Pentagon asked for 1,200 computers and accessories three weeks before the Persian Gulf War, CompuAdd worked around the clock to fill the $30-million deal.

When Sears gave the company specifications for a new computerized cash register last summer, CompuAdd had two models ready when Sears executives visited a few days later. That was a $53-million deal.

“That’s what we do best, quick response. We listen to our customers,” Hayden said.

And customers are responding. Sales have grown from $44 million in 1986 to more than $500 million in 1990 and 1991.

Meantime, CompuAdd has placed at the top of Dataquest’s PC user satisfaction survey virtually every quarter since polling began in 1990.

Hayden first tried the break-up-and-grow strategy last fall, turning CompuAdd’s mail-order division into a separate company called CompuAdd Express Corp.

Late last year, computer giant IBM undertook a similar strategy: establishing separate subsidiaries for many of its business lines, like one for printers, one for data storage systems and one for hiring and recruiting. International Business Machines Chairman John Akers said the plan will make the units more autonomous and quicker to react to changes in the industry.

Meanwhile CompuAdd is hoping to hold on to its biggest order ever: half of a $1-billion contract to supply the Air Force with desktop computers.

The contract, known in the industry as Desktop 4, has been challenged by competitors, and new bids are due next month.

Hayden believes that CompuAdd will win again, though he also expects another round of protests.

“The advantage we have now is all of our suppliers are taking us seriously,” Hayden said.