SanDisk 2003 Annual Report Download - page 15

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Sales and Distribution
We market our products using a direct sales organization, distributors and manufacturers' representatives.
We also sell products to certain customers on a private label basis and under the SanDisk brand in the retail
channel. Our sales eÅorts are organized as follows:
Direct Sales Force. Our direct sales oÇces are located in Havasu City, Arizona; Maitland, Florida;
Herndon, Virginia; Sunnyvale, California; Hannover, Munich and Rantingen, Germany; Kista, Sweden;
Hong Kong, China; and Yokohama and Osaka, Japan. These oÇces support our major OEM customers
and our distribution and manufacturers' representative partners. Our retail sales oÇces are located in
Trabuco Canyon, California; Avon, Ohio; Bedford, Texas; Syracuse, NY; Greenock, Scotland; Haarlem,
the Netherlands; Munich, Germany; Yokohama, Japan; Osaka, Japan and Hong Kong, China.
Distributors. In the United States, our products are sold through Arrow Electronics Inc., Avnet
Inc. and Bell MicroProducts Inc. to OEM customers for a wide variety of industrial applications. In
addition, we have distributors in various regions of the world including Europe, Japan, Australia, New
Zealand, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Independent Manufacturers' Representatives. In the United States, Canada and Europe, our direct
sales force is supported in its sales eÅorts by more than 50 independent Ñrms. These domestic and
international Ñrms receive a commission for providing support to our direct sales force and distributors in
the industrial distribution, OEM and retail channels. The manufacturers' representative companies sell
our products as well as products from other manufacturers.
OEMs. We provide SanDisk brand name and private label products to OEMs in the United States,
Europe, Japan and the PaciÑc Rim.
Retail FulÑllment Operations. Our retail distribution channel includes the use of Modus Media
International, Inc., or MMI, in the United States and the Netherlands and Nippon Express, or Nippon,
in Japan as third-party fulÑllment facilities. MMI provides worldwide packout services for our retail
business, which include labeling and packaging our raw cards, as well as shipping the Ñnished product
directly to our customers. MMI's facilities are located in Raleigh, North Carolina, which for 2003
serviced North America and Asia, and Appledorn, the Netherlands, which services Europe, the Middle
East and Africa. Nippon Express in Japan provides similar services in Japan.
Retail. We ship SanDisk brand name products directly to consumer electronics stores, oÇce
superstores, photo retailers, mass merchants, catalog and mail order companies, Internet and e-commerce
retailers, drug stores, supermarkets and convenience stores and selected retail distributors. Our retail
distributors include Ingram Micro, Inc., Tech Data Corporation, BDI-Laguna Corporation, D&H, and
Wynit, Inc. in the United States, in addition to approximately 50 international distributors. Our products
are available in approximately 60,000 retail stores worldwide. Approximately 20 independent manufactur-
ers' representative Ñrms are supporting our sales eÅorts in the retail channel worldwide. In addition, we
sell our products on the Internet through third parties such as Amazon.com.
Customer Service and Technical Support
We provide customers with comprehensive product service and support. We provide technical support
through our applications engineering group located in the United States, Japan and Hong Kong. We work
closely with our customers to monitor the performance of our product designs, to provide application design
support and assistance, and to gain insight into our customers' needs to help in the design of future products.
Our support package includes technical documentation and application design assistance. In some cases,
we oÅer additional support that includes training, system-level design, implementation and integration support
and failure analysis. We believe that tailoring the technical support level to our customers' needs is essential
for the success of product introductions and to achieve a high level of satisfaction among our customers. The
majority of our products are warrantied for periods ranging from one to seven years.
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