Step 1 : Introduction to the question "Which midwestern computer company shipped its products in cow-spotted boxes? "
It was founded on September 5, 1985, on a farm outside Sioux City, Iowa, by Ted Waitt and Mike Hammond, it was one of the first widely successful direct-sales PC companies, utilizing a sales model copied from Dell, and playing up its Iowa roots with low-tech advertisements proclaiming "Computers from Iowa?" Lake Michigan. The state is divided into 72 counties.