Ingram Micro Exec to Become Head of Buy.com as IPO Nears

In what appears to be another step toward going public, online retailer Buy.com Inc. said Tuesday it hired an Ingram Micro Inc. executive to run the Aliso Viejo-based company, further strengthening the robust ties between the two companies.

Gregory Hawkins, 44, will take over as chief executive on March 1. Buy.com founder Scott Blum will remain as the company’s chairman.

Blum said last fall that Buy.com would go public by the end of 1998, but the company apparently held off when the new-issues market went into a tailspin.

Several months ago, the company recognized that it needed a chief executive to replace Blum, who acknowledged that his role was as “an idea man” and operations are not his forte.

“The opportunity to help a company go to the next level from an operating management position is pretty darn attractive,” said Hawkins, who had been senior vice president of global sales at Santa Ana-based Ingram, the world’s largest personal computer distributor. “This company has been growing dramatically and it has an opportunity to execute better and better.”

Buy.com stumbled on the execution front this month by not honoring a price for a computer monitor that the company said had been posted in error. Since then, at least a dozen Web sites have sprouted protesting its handling of the situation and alleging a pattern of erroneous pricing. And the company’s customer service ratings have plummeted.

Officials at Softbank Corp., which last year took a 20% stake in Buy.com and inked a distribution partnership with Ingram, lauded the choice of Hawkins.

“As an industry veteran, he positions us well as we try to go public,” said Scott Russell, general partner at Softbank. A stock offering could be made “in the next few months,” he added.

The Buy.com board also gave Chief Financial Officer Allen Barbieri the additional title of president.

Two-year-old Buy.com, which claims to have the “lowest prices on Earth,” has made a business of undercutting competitors’ prices and making up lost revenue through advertising.

Ingram Micro also has ruffled the feathers of other resellers by what is often perceived as a too-close relationship with Buy.com, which relies on Ingram for all of its computer products.