Michael Krasny (businessman)

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For other uses, see Michael Krasny (disambiguation).

Michael Krasny is a businessman from Illinois. He is the founder and former chief executive officer of CDW Corporation, a direct seller of technical gadgets including computers and networking equipment. Krasny's previous job before creating CDW was that of a Toyota car salesman for his father at Arlington Toyota.

After quitting his job as a car salesman in 1982, Krasny was forced to sell his own computer for cash. Reportedly, so many people responded to his sales ad listed in the Chicago Tribune that Krasny began buying computers in order to resell them, taking CDW public a decade later in 1993. According to Forbes, his first caller from 1982 is still a customer (as of 2000). [1]

In 2005, Forbes magazine named Krasny the 293rd richest man in the world, with an estimated wealth of USD $1.90 billion. [2]