Business Pulse

Lifetime Achievement Award: Dan Washburn, CEO, Windermere Real Estate/Whatcom
executive officer with the William
Dierickx Company that eventually
sold to IKON Office Solutions (Pa.)
during the mid-‘80s.
The positive lesson, of his telling:
“We were small, like 20-25
employees, about $3 million in
annual sales, and growing. At a
time when Xerox would only sell
to smaller companies, and would
lease only to big companies, a little
company in Bellevue with eight
employees was just getting started
and wanted to rent its office
machines. Xerox had a monopoly
on plain paper copiers, but their
patent had run out…(and) we
were getting in on the revolution,
the Japanese invasion of Canon,
Ricoh, Minolta, Sharp.
next decade we were the exclusive
office equipment sales and maintenance
company for Microsoft. We
sold them thousands of copiers,
and then when fax machines came
in, we sold them thousands of fax
machines.”
Barely a couple of weeks later,
the negative lesson:
“This little company in Kent
bought one of our first plain-paper
copiers, a Canon 200. About three
months later, Canon nationally ran
a promotion (for) a $200 rebate.
“That was a manufacturer’s
inducement to sell new copiers
(and) receive the $200 to pass
along to the customer. I get a call
from this gentleman who said, ‘Mr.
Washburn, I saw in the newspaper
where I’m entitled to a $200 rebate
for the copier we just recently purchased.’
“I told him, ‘If you were to
order a copier now, I could put
the serial number down for sales
beginning now, but not for a sale
three months ago.’
“(At) IBM, I learned about
their whole environment.
Turns out, it’s where I
felt I fit best. It’s funny,
friends said, ‘You’ll have to
wear dark suits and white
shirts and neckties.’ I said,
‘Yeah, good – I love that.’
—Dan Washburn, CEO of Windermere Real
Estate in Bellingham/Whatcom County
“We decided, OK, let’s do it.
I went to a stationery store and
bought some rental contract forms,
pasted our logo on one, and ran a
copy of it. We put in some dollar
figures, and as our sales manager
was going out the door, I said,
‘Make sure that the owner signs
this, that he’s guaranteeing that
we’re going to get paid.’
“Turns out, that owner was a
25-year-old named Bill Gates.”
“We had no idea who Bill Gates
was, or Microsoft, but because
Xerox stiffed him and our company
honored that agreement, for the
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