CXtec celebrates growth Dinosaur-style

CNY Business Journal (1996+), Feb 25, 2005 by Dickinson, Casey J

SYRACUSE - CXtec celebrates the dinosaur. Founder and owner William Pomeroy built the computer-networking and equipment seller from his garage into a company with more than $100 million in annual revenues.

Working from his home, Pomeroy developed the low-overhead business strategy that allowed him to build his company.

"Doing business over the phone gives us high efficiency at tow cost," says Pomeroy.

Phone sales still play an important role in helping CXtec sell products across the nation and around the world in addition to catalog, Internet, and in-person sales. CXtec has customers in 30 countries. Medium to large-sized businesses and organizations in the competitive education, government, healtliz care, and manufacturing sectors make up the bulk of CXtec's customer base.

Over the past several years, Pomeroy has steadily recruited a team of executives to fulfill his vision for growth.

After a CXtec employee lands a big sale, the company's publicaddress system comes alive with celebratory sound effects. Depending on the size of a sale, the representative might receive a sonic salute from a roaring dinosaur or an animated pig. The pig represents the company's Profit Improvement Growth (PIG) program.

In the spirit of the founder, CXtec employees try to maintain a fun atmosphere outside of work as well.

CXtec's house band "The Dinosaurs" reached the finals of the FORTUNE Magazine "Battle of the Corporate Bands" last year. Employees traveled to Cleveland's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame to see the competition. The company's top sellers go on an annual cruise to the Caribbean during the winter.

Pomeroy started Reliance Used Computer Corp. in 1978. The company dealt in used IBM mainframe-computer products. After IBM cables became a large part of sales, Pomeroy's business became CABLE Express in 1980. Later it became CABLE Express Technologies. Now it's simply CXtec. The name change, says Pomeroy, eliminates assumptions that the company sold only cable products.

In 1989, CXtec introduced a computer-products catalog that helped boost sales and fuel an 8,000 square-foot expansion at CXtec's Syracuse facility.

Anticipating future growth, CXtec moved into a new headquarters building in 1997. The building, a former retail store off South Bay Road in the Town of Salina, serves as world headquarters for CXtec. Visible to visitors arriving by air and passing by on Route 81, CXtec's 66,000 square-foot building has room for 500 employees. CXtec employs 350 at three locations. In addition to CXtec's headquarters building, the company operates a distribution center on Ainsley Drive in Syracuse and a Buffalo-area sales office in the suburb of Williamsville.

The headquarters building's first floor is home to CXtec's "Junkasaurus Park." The dinosaur-themed display celebrates CXtec's growth through overlooked opportunity.

The 1990s provided more opportunities for CXtec to step in where other companies had left a supply Vacuum. The shortening product life cycles for networking products, explains Pomeroy, opened another sales niche for CXtec. The company began acquiring used computer equipment and bringing it back to its original technical standards. Since the products were rebuilt, tested, and certified, CXtec dubbed the re-born equipment "equal2new." CXtec offers a lifetime warranty on its "equal2new" products.

In addition to the equal2new product lines, CXtec sells new networking equipment from major manufacturers such as Cisco, Nortel, and 3Com. CXtec also sells voice technology including equal2new telephone systems.

With a mix of "equal2new," new, and existing customer equipment, says Pomeroy, CXtec is able to offer customers a technology fix at lower costs than that for all new computer equipment.

"With trade-in, cash, and credit," he says, "many customers are able to upgrade their networks with no new capital expended."

CXtec's future plans include a concentration on serving the Albany to Buffalo, Erie Canal Corridor. The company also is focusing on training. It has spent more than $500,000 so far this year on employee training and expansion of its Syracuse Technology Certification and Distribution Center.

BOTW PROFILE

William G. Pomeroy

Founder and CEO

CXtec

* Age: 60

* Residence: LaFayette

* Family: Wife, Sandra; daughter, Deryn Lee

* Education: MBA in marketing, from the Wharton School of Finance, Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1968; bachelor's degree, in management engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1966.

* Interests: Amateur radio; travel and adventure; collecting: coins, stamps, recorded music, mainframe computers; and genealogy - found lost family branch living in Pompey 200 years ago.

* Favorite part of the job: Providing opportunities for others to grow

BOTW FACTS

CXtec

5404 South Bay Road

Syracuse, NY, 13221

Phone: (315) 476-3000

Fax: (315) 455-1800

www.cxtec.com

* Type of business: Sells new and pre-owned computer equipment and provides technical support.

* Year founded: 1978

* Employees: 350

* Key officers: William G. Pomeroy, founder and CEO;

Barbara S. Ashkin, vice president and chief operating officer;