[2] According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the company "helped spawn a revolution in personal computers ... [selling] machines for as little as $999 in an effort to woo new price-sensitive users", to which larger manufacturers like Compaq and Packard Bell NEC followed suit.

[4] Johns felt that he could compete with Dell and Gateway 2000 in the build-to-order market and sold $2 million worth of Compaq's shares to put into the formation of Monorail in 1995.

The core marketing strategy the three laid out before production of any computers began was to combine the slim inventory of Gateway and Dell (due to their build-to-order nature) with the trust afforded by tangible goods on the retail floor, as Compaq had managed.

[6] This marriage of approaches was dubbed "Dellpaq" by Andrew Watson, Monorail's VP of marketing in 1997, and was to be further augmented with a sub-$1000 price, to entice first-time computer buyers.

[9] Meanwhile, James Clarke, a former SunTrust Banks executive whom Johns hired as chief financial officer, negotiated a deal with his former employer to handle accounts receivable.

[4] Phelps, a metal press based in Kansas City, entered the computer manufacturing business in the early 1990s assembling Compaq's Prolinea systems, later earning contract work from Dell, Xerox, AT&T, and IBM.

[17] Purchasers who peeled or punctured a label in order to disassemble the Monorail PC voided their one-year warranty, only the first 90 days of which providing no labor charges.

Stephen Manes of the New York Times opined that these surcharges led to the user "paying a huge premium over conventional upgrades".

[16] Monorail later gained Circuit City, MicroWarehouse, and Egghead Computer as retail partners and Ingram Micro, SED International, and Tech Data as enterprise distributors.

[19] While the Monorail PC initially seemed to be performing well, stiff competition from computer companies introducing sub-$1000 desktops in 1997 led sales to flounder.

[4] More urgently, Phelps found itself millions of dollars in debt and stalled manufacturing of the Monorail PC amid layoffs, leading to an order backlog of 90 days toward the end of 1997.