My Boss the Shit Kicker
THREE FRANTIC SOUTH KOREAN executives showed up at Pete
Skarzynski’s office in Richardson, Texas, in January 1998. “What do you
need to double your plan for the year?” one asked. “We want you to grow
six times.”
A gregarious and talkative veteran of AT&T and Lucent Technologies
who once did a stint in London debriefing teams of CIA officers on the
telecommunications industry, Pete had joined Samsung a year earlier as
senior vice president for sales and marketing at Samsung
Telecommunications America.
“In essence,” the tall and always smiling redhead told me over sushi and
sake in Dallas, “I ran the American cellphone business.”
Samsung’s first employees in Richardson hoisted the biggest logo in the
neighborhood up onto their new six-floor building, where Samsung
occupied four floors, despite the fact that only seven employees worked
there at the beginning. Chairman Lee had given Skarzynski a blank check
to work with Peter Arnell in New York and others to put Samsung phones
in the hands of Americans. The timing was perfect, and not just because of
the economic crisis. In 1996 the South Korean government had finished
building a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) cell tower network—
American carriers were using a different network to this point—and this
smart government policy immediately made Samsung an early mover in
CDMA phones.
Sprint was going to be the first U.S. carrier to adopt the same network.
“I need a cheap Asian company in here, and you guys are doing
something,” a Sprint executive told Skarzynski, inking a $600 million deal
to sell 1.7 million bottom-shelf Samsung phones.