Get those geeks!

Next time you’re looking for an accessory to boost your sales to a customer, head to www.galleryserpentine.com.au. You won’t find any conventional point-of-sale goodies, but you will encounter a striking range of PVC coats that look like they are straight out of The Matrix.

There are also some rather extraordinary corsets, available in either “overbust” or “underbust” styles. And don’t ignore the “Gothic Lolita Victoriana”, a line that will certainly get your hard drive spinning.

But before you dismiss these items as an unlooked-for insight into the odd things CRN writers get up to on the weekend, type another web address into your browser: www.overclockers.com.au.

The site is the self-proclaimed online home of Australia’s builders of bespoke PCs and exotic cases (“modders”), PC enthusiasts that tweak CPUs’ clockspeeds to increase their performance (“overclockers”) and their games-freak brethren who like nothing more than to build the fastest and coolest-looking PCs imaginable and then equip them with all manner of accessories in pursuit of the perfect score.

Many of the people who perpetrate these acts on their PCs also like to dress up in the kind of clothing offered by Gallery Serpentine, which sponsors overclockers.com.au. And the link between the two is instructive: modders, gamers and overclockers are far from usual computer customers.

Francis Lim, business development manager at cooling systems vendor Thermaltake Australia, says the groups are best understood as a digital manifestation of car enthusiasts.

Lim says that 20 years ago, “people modified their cars to make them look good on the road; now they mod their computers so when their friends come over or they go to a LAN party they look different”.

And just as the youth of yesteryear built entire identities around their cars, modders and overclockers make similar emotional investments in their PCs.

“This is not a hobby,” says Ashton Mills, the editor of Atomic magazine. “This is a lifestyle choice. Computers and technology is all these people think about. It is very much a culture.”

Atomic, a sister publication of CRN, caters for this culture with reviews of the latest in hardware and software, plus a section called “Culture Shock” in which the magazine reviews the films, books and other cultural artefacts that come with the technologically-oriented lifestyle its readers have embarked upon.

“The number one priority to be able to reach this kind of audience is to realise how they think," Mills says, offering the oft-lampooned television show MacGyver as a way to understand their proclivities.”

“MacGyver beats the bad guys using his mind,” Mills says. “He didn’t win through force like they do in sport.”

“Our readers are passionate about technology. If you can be as passionate about technology as they are, you can sell to them. If they find someone as passionate and geeky as they are, they will trust it.”

And it is worth seeking that trust. While no data exists to describe the size of these communities, there is no doubt they are significant. LAN parties, events at which organisers assemble a temporary local area network for multiplayer gaming, regularly attract hundreds of players and a similar numbers of spectators.

On any given weekend it is likely there will be at least one such party in each capital city around Australia and these events are prime sales and marketing opportunities for resellers that address these markets, as they offer a chance to engage with customers in numbers that may have eluded precise quantification, but impress market-watchers nonetheless.