Regional resellers: Bunbury

Nerdism

Chad Roberts, owner

About 10 years ago I decided I didn’t like working for somebody else and thought it would be a good idea to go out on my own. It started with me and one other guy, and in the second year I bought out my business partner.

We have grown and grown from there. Now we are in a big shop in the homemaker centre and I have four techs. We repair and sell and do all the rest of it, and we also have a corporate side that does managed services.

About three years ago the Leading Edge store closed and I saw the opportunity. I used to work for a Leading Edge store when I was 18 and knew how good they are. The way things are going with the market over the next few years, you need to be associated with somebody and I see Leading Edge as really well run – you’ve got everyone there at your disposal without having to pay thousands.

I helped them start Smart Choice Tech Repairs for mobile phones and that’s going quite well. I’m operational manager and help the stores set up and get going.

FACT FILE

• Headcount 5
• Established 2006
• Director Chad Roberts
• Main vendors Toshiba, Lenovo, Acer, Leader

Phoenix IT

Ryan Bilsby, managing director

I started the business in my last year of university in 1996. I’d been working for the man since I was 12, so thought I’d see if I could do it myself. The business was able to sustain itself and I won a Telstra Young Business Achiever Award in 2001, slowly growing from there.

I started off doing technical and network support, but my core trade is software engineering. We have two sides to the business – IT support and software development, which is writing software, dynamic websites and now apps.

We are generally a Microsoft shop but support Apple devices too. We do high-level networking when required and are getting more referrals from eastern state companies that subcontract to us, plus we do internet connections for AAPT and Optus.

We do more and more cloud stuff, but it is more educating clients about what it means and what the real impacts are, especially being regional and not having the bandwidth that the capital cities have.

FACT FILE

• Headcount 6
• Established 1996
• Director Ryan Bilsby
• Main vendor Microsoft

IVC Computer Services

Ian Chen, director

I started IVC in 1991. We’ve grown from there to be 13 of us now.

We have a two divisions. IVC is retail and we have our corporate division, offering data back-ups, cloud services and disaster recovery.

There is potential growth in data backup and disaster recovery. The ‘break and fix’ work is dying because computers are so cheap now. The future looks pretty bleak for selling computers, because the volumes aren’t there and nor are the margins. You have to think ahead, otherwise you would just walk away.

We’ve got good and loyal staff working for us. You can’t just sell things and forget it if you can’t support it. Bunbury is a small town everybody knows everybody, particularly on the corporate side.

FACT FILE

• Headcount 13
• Established 1991
• Director Ian Chen
• Main distributors Synnex, Ingram, Multimedia, Achieva, Leader