MicroAge was an American technology sales company based in Tempe, Arizona

Tempe, Arizona

Tempe is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, USA, with the Census Bureau reporting a 2010 population of 161,719. The city is named after the Vale of Tempe in Greece. Tempe is located in the East Valley section of metropolitan Phoenix; it is bordered by Phoenix and Guadalupe on the west, Scottsdale...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. It was founded in 1976 by Jeffrey D. McKeever and Alan P. Hald as a hobby computer store named The Byte Shop. MicroAge expanded from a retail storefront to the most widely known franchiser in the computer industry with over 1000 franchises world wide. Its primary competitor at the time was ComputerLand

ComputerLand

ComputerLand was a widespread chain of retail computer stores during the early years of the personal computer "revolution", and was one of the outlets chosen to introduce the IBM PC in 1981. The first ComputerLand opened in 1976, and the chain eventually included about 800 stores by 1985...

, another well-known franchising operation. The company was listed on the Fortune 500

Fortune 500

The Fortune 500 is an annual list compiled and published by Fortune magazine that ranks the top 500 U.S. closely held and public corporations as ranked by their gross revenue after adjustments made by Fortune to exclude the impact of excise taxes companies collect. The list includes publicly and...

 list from 1995-2001. It employed over 6,000 people and generated revenues in excess of $6 billion at its zenith.

In 1980, MicroAge opened the first computer store located in a mall in Paradise Valley, Arizona

Paradise Valley, Arizona

Paradise Valley is a small, affluent town in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. According to the 2005 Census Bureau, the population of the town was 14,558. Despite the town's relatively small area and population compared to other municipalities in the Phoenix metropolitan area, Paradise...

. The store sold computers popular in the early home computer

Home computer

Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...

 age, such as the Apple II

Apple II series

The Apple II series is a set of 8-bit home computers, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977 with the original Apple II...

, Northstar

NorthStar Horizon

Introduced in October 1977, the NorthStar Horizon was an 8-bit computer system based on the ZiLOG Z80A microprocessor. It was produced by North Star Computers, and it could be purchased either in kit form or pre-assembled....

, Imsai

IMSAI 8080

The IMSAI 8080 was an early microcomputer released in late 1975, based on the Intel 8080 and later 8085 and S-100 bus. It was a clone of its main competitor, the earlier MITS Altair 8800. The IMSAI is largely regarded as the first "clone" computer. The IMSAI machine ran a highly modified version of...

 and Altair computers

Altair 8800

The MITS Altair 8800 was a microcomputer design from 1975 based on the Intel 8080 CPU and sold by mail order through advertisements in Popular Electronics, Radio-Electronics and other hobbyist magazines. The designers hoped to sell only a few hundred build-it-yourself kits to hobbyists, and were...

.

In 2000 MicroAge was delisted from the NASDAQ

NASDAQ

The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...

, trading over-the-counter

Over-the-counter (finance)

Within the derivatives markets, many products are traded through exchanges. An exchange has the benefit of facilitating liquidity and also mitigates all credit risk concerning the default of a member of the exchange. Products traded on the exchange must be well standardised to transparent trading....

 as MICAQ. In 2001 it filed for bankruptcy, terminated all business and liquidated all remaining assets to pay creditors.

One of the founders, Jeffrey D. McKeever, subsequently bought the rights to the name "MicroAge" and uses this as a "doing business as

Doing business as

The phrase "doing business as" is a legal term used in the United States, meaning that the trade name, or fictitious business name, under which the business or operation is conducted and presented to the world is not the legal name of the legal person who actually own it and are responsible for it...

" name for Frontier Technology LLC. The new company organized by McKeever has a different ownership structure and legal company name from the original MicroAge.

MicroAge is currently headquartered in Tempe, Arizona and is one of the prominant IT reselling companies in the industry.