Regional Resellers: Hitting aces in Albany

Phil Shilcock, owner and director, Best Office Systems

When I moved from Perth and bought the business eight years ago, Best Office Systems was already eight years old. We have a dozen staff in Albany and three hours’ drive away in Narrogin. 

Our core business is A3 multi-function printers by Ricoh, Brother, Konica and Minolta, and we’re stretching into document management and IT. Not just a box seller, we’re consultants – although some customers are transactional and that’s fine. It’s about changing our approach. I’m right into my fishing and have a patch of land – my ‘sanctuary’ – where I grow fruit and vegies, so Albany is a great place to live. But it’s hard to find staff. Young guys disappear into the mines. But once people start working for us, they stay and that is a bit different to other companies in my game. Maybe we’re just nicer. Sometimes we bring in staff on 457 visas to patch skills gaps but the government is making it more expensive. But our biggest challenge is government centralising buying in Perth; many departments I used to sell to I can’t any more. Nevertheless, we’re growing the business and have knocked down a wall and moved to the shop next door as we gear up for the next phase.

John Dent, founder and director, Australian Telephone Networks

The business I established in 1993 is evolving from a traditional Telstra dealer to an ICT company with a new carrier arm for rebilling and telco services under our own brand. We resell NEC, Panasonic and AAPT and source from distributors such as Commsplus, BMS, Rexel, Lawrence and Hanson.

I had been involved in communications in Perth and at Telecom New Zealand [now Spark] for about 25 years before I came here. Our telco services competing with Telstra for wi-fi and microwave are growing and we’re offering last-mile internet and symmetrical data services. But traditional PBX is lagging. Voice is just an app on the LAN so companies that aren’t evolving are being left behind. We recently built a microwave network for a government department, a turnkey project with site selection, government approvals, hut, mast, solar setup with four microwave links to sites across 20 km2. And we installed a microwave link for the Alzheimer’s Association in Albany where Telstra still has no landlines – the customer was waiting for 11 months for Telstra to act. They run eight Citrix users, internet and VoIP lines on their PBX across the link and love it.

Stuart Evans, owner and managing director, T4 technology

This month is our 10th anniversary in this store. Prior to establishing the business, I was network manager at WA’s daily newspaper, The West Australian, in Perth for seven years. I started T4 in the Albany Business Centre, a business incubator, in August 2003 and opened my first store the following year.

I have another shop in Bunbury and between the two locations have 15 full-time and two part-time staff as well as two subcontractors. I’m working on a management structure now to devolve the day-to-day operational tasks. We were Albany’s first Apple reseller and we also sell laptops, desktops and servers to education, government and business. We also have relationships with vendors such as HP, Cisco and Microsoft and distributors including Ingram Micro, Synnex and Anyware. The margins in computer retail are tight, so we are focusing on adding value through peaceof- mind services, ongoing support and training. Although the region is hampered by poor broadband and our remoteness, customers have jumped on our cloud, monitoring and virtual server solutions this year.