Dell computer tv

"Why am I not on your Top 150 list?" That has to be one of the most frequent phone calls I field over the course of a year. And my answer? Either, "You're too small" (Our cut-off this year was $260 million); "You're not American" (We only list American and American-based retailers); or "You're not a retailer!" (Seriously. The number of vendors trying to convince me to add them to our list is amazing.)

Then there are those we debate about on a daily basis. Like E-Bay. Is it a retailer? Certainly it competes for mass consumer dollars. And it's definitely massive. But should it be mentioned in the same breath as Best Buy, Kmart and Linens 'n Things?

When push comes to shove, the eBay decision is easy. Selling mostly other people's stuff--no matter how much of it you sell--makes eBay enough of an oddity that they don't fit the mold.

But the lines only get blurrier from there.

In the last few years, several top companies, especially in the consumer electronics industry, have danced dangerously close to the identity divide. We're talking big names like Dell, Gateway, Apple and Hewlett Packard--all born with the dominant manufacturing gene, but now all involved to varying degrees in the business of retail.

And this year, it seems, that involvement has only gone deeper. Apple's base of retail stores keeps getting larger, as it keeps expanding its assortment of national brand offerings; Gateway and HP keep layering on new "non-core" products that extend them well beyond the PC; and Dell, arguably the industry's best example of ongoing manufacturer metamorphosis, has come so far in its emphasis on retail that even they don't know what to call themselves anymore.

How do I know this? Because I put the question to ceo Michael Dell at a recent event hosted by the National Retail Federation. When it comes to Dell's self-identity, I asked, do you consider yourself more of a manufacturer or a retailer?

Dell's response--being the straight shooter that he is--was both brutally honest and cunningly vague. "That's a great question," said Dell, whose brain could almost be heard churning for a more satisfying answer. "We often have that debate in-house. And frankly, there are those who will always consider us a manufacturer, and those who will always think of us as a retailer."

That Dell itself doesn't have a clear-cut self-identity as a retailer is a reassuring affirmation that excluding them from our Top 150 list was the right thing to do. But you have to ask yourself, as I have many times, how long will it be before a major manufacturer like Dell crosses that great divide? How long before its identity as a retailer eclipses its identity as a manufacturer? How long before the public instinctively turns to them for their everyday CE purchases as readily as they turn to Best Buy, Circuit City, RadioShack or Wal-Mart?

In the case of Dell, the answer may be, "A lot sooner than you think." They've just made a major push beyond the core PC by launching such items as an MP3 player, a widescreen flat-panel TV, a home entertainment projector and an online music service (see complete story, page 6) and have steadily risen in the ranks as a top consumer brand in our annual Top Brands survey (see page 37).

Now what's left to see is whether Dell (and the many companies like it) can take a rock-solid reputation among consumers as a leading computer destination and parlay it into an equally strong reputation as an online home for consumer electronics. With its stellar track record and its $35 billion position of power, Dell's not the kind of company you'd want to bet against.

And if you were to put money down on the future of Dell (or, at the very least, the future integration of CE product into the computer realm), the odds are very good that Dell and/or one of several computer "manufacturers" will one day be listed on our Top 150.

And here's a bet you can take to the bank: It won't take a call from Michael Dell to get there.