Regional resellers: Mount Gambier

Computer Bits: William Hood, founder

We started in 1985 – I think we are the oldest continuously-owned computer business in South Australia, and one of the oldest in Australia. 

The business grew to a peak around 2000, and has declined as computers and accessories have become sold by everyone including service stations, newsagents and post offices. In the time that we’ve been here, there have been something like 30 computer stores open and close in Mount Gambier.

We are more service now than retail. We are a Toshiba dealer and service centre, and we do service work for Dell, and are a service agent of Leader Computers. We used to build our own computers, but when it got down to 15 percent of our business we swapped over to buying manufactured desktops from Leader.

There’s no future for small retail-focused computer dealers. To stay alive you need to be on your toes all the time.

Synet: Rod Sparks, director

I’ve got a networking and systems management background. I was working with the government and decided to branch out on my own. That was 16 years ago.

We’ve been working on the SoHo sector and maintaining old-style personalised customer service where the clients trust us and we trust the clients.  

We’ve got two core parts of the business. The first is installations, maintenance and troubleshooting for clients – we can cover anything from PC repairs through to database maintenance and network installations. The number of PCs we are selling now is a quarter of what it used to be because the nationals are in and selling, but they can’t provide the service.

The other part of our business is working for national and international companies as remote hands and expertise, troubleshooting installations and so on. And we are doing more of that as people centralise their network and computing facilities.

Green Triangle Electronics: Shayne Hosking, director

We started in 1998 with three guys and have grown to 30 staff members. We have 16 technicians and they cover everything these days – being a regional dealer you have to be a jack of all trades. 

We do networks, and being a Telstra dealer we also handle communication products. We are with HP for the IT side of things, and that is mostly because we can service their product here. We do a lot of other vendors – Cisco, NEC phone systems, Toshiba and Kyocera in regard to photocopiers, and we are certified across the board. That’s one of the banes of a business owner now – all these certifications that you’ve got to keep abreast of that tie up your staff when they should be out fixing our customer’s stuff.