On 17 January, Dell officially inaugurated their new offices in Capellen. On hand were Emmanuel Mouquet, the new General Manager for Belgium and Luxembourg and Micaël Weber, Development Manager for Luxembourg. The driver for the new opening is to, "accelerate the growth of the company on the Luxembourg market and to better meet the needs for its customers," according to the company's press release.

Since the beginning of 2006, Dell has realised growth of 27% in the Benelux, and 50% growth in Luxembourg. "Within the framework of its expansion in Belgium and in Luxembourg, Dell has already recruited more than 40 collaborators in Belgium and in Luxembourg (including 3 in Luxembourg) and in particular has reinforced its team with new 'Solutions Architects and Project Leaders'. "We are convinced that the opening of these new offices will enable us to continue to develop our activities in Luxembourg," declared Mouquet.

The number of local employees remains fairly low. "We are being prudent about our move into the market," Mouquet continued. " We only have 5-7 people here but those numbers are misleading. We have a team in Brussels for example and our network for customer care extends to France and the Netherlands."

Weber said that the company chose Capellen, because it is a very good "display window," for their presence in Luxembourg. "Our new building is very well known and Dell wants to make itself visible." Their new location also puts them in good proximity to people with whom they can partner with locally. In Luxembourg, Dell currently partners with Unisys, Getronics, Guidance, Dimension Data, LAB, and iTEC.

The company is based on a unique model of direct sales in order to be able to respond as closely as possible to the requirements of its customers. Direct relations with the supplier, construction personalised to each order, logistics and services have enabled Dell to build strong relationships with a broad base of Luxembourg and Belgian customers and to ensure its commercial success.

"One of the reasons we are having success on the Luxembourg market is the Dell Business Model," Mouquet said, and explained that the company's point of differentiation is its different approach, based on the principal of total satisfaction to the client and an A-Z offer where Dell remains the single point of contact. "Dell remains responsible for everything that happens to the client," he said.

Will the Dell Effect occur in Luxembourg? Dell's direct model drives ever-improving quality and ever-decreasing costs in every part of the value chain. This industry-wide phenomenon has come to be known as "The Dell Effect," or what Dell calls the "democratisation of technology". The theory is, that when Dell moves into town, "the price of computers goes down, but the quality goes up," said Mouquet.

For the moment, the Dell.lu website is only for big companies, and not for individual consumers and smaller enterprises, but these entities are still served by Dell.be (as they have been) or customers can call a direct number specified on the Dell.lu website.