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A pop quiz for those of you who just hitting your teenage years in 1986: what were you doing with your life back then? Desperately trying to make yourself presentable in the midst of puberty and raging hormones? Waiting for that new album from Prince, Springsteen, Genesis? Pumping quarters into PacMan at the local video game arcade?

In 1986, a then-14-year-old Jeff Thompson was attending school and throwing a newspaper route in his hometown of Ada, Oklahoma, and spending his spare time tinkering with computers – the products of an industry that was just starting to transform our lives. More and more desktop PCs were showing up in workplaces and homes. A brand new Apple Mac Plus contained all of one MB of random access memory and would set you back about $2600.

It was the memory components in those computers that fascinated Thompson. Most teenagers back then, if they chose to  look inside the guts of an IBM, Commodore or Tandy computer, might just see a mess of circuitry and soldering. Thompson gazed inside the computers he took apart and saw the makings of his own business – EDGE Tech Corp, specializing in computer memory products.

“Computers at that time was a hobby for me, and the business started for me as a hobby too,” Thompson said. “I was buying computers from the classified section of the newspaper, and the next week I was selling them to someone else in the classified ads.”

“He quickly discovered that some of the components inside the computers were of more value than the computers he was buying as a whole,” said Shane Taylor, EDGE Tech channel sales manager.

Kandi Sigona, EDGE Tech’s vice president of strategy and development, said Thompson would first modify the computers before re-selling them. Even at age 14, he was trying to add value, “and boom, he had a business.”

That business has grown over the last 24 years to include not just computer memory, but external hard drives, specialized memory products for desktops and laptops, portable USB drives and digital media to capture the rapidly growing amount of data and media generated by consumers and businesses. Thompson now has offices in Ada and Dallas, Texas. And Thompson, EDGE Tech’s president and CEO, has managed to keep pace with much bigger competitors who have more to spend on marketing and whose businesses span the world.

“Our management team realized early on as a company that it couldn’t just be about dollars, because we don’t have the dollars that the big companies do,” Thompson said. “Our job then, as wel as today, is to make us be a company that customers want to do busienss with – by focusing on personal relationships. It’s easy to say, but not so easy to do.”

‘I think Jeff started thinking pretty early, ‘You know, let’s build relationships versus being just a number on a wall,” added Win Cramer, vice president of purchasing and product development.

That attitude is all over EDGE Tech’s Dallas offices, where sales and marketing strategies are developed and refined. You see it in signs that proclaim “Average Sucks” and “People Do Business With People They Like.”

Those signs point to relationships with key industry partners like Apple and IBM, and with brand-name resellers like Walmart, Costco, CDW and Staples.

Thompson, still showing a lot of the passion and enthusiasm that was evident in the 14-year-old entrepreneur he once was, gives credit to his team. “It’s that special spark with people that we hire on the sales team,” Thompson said.

For more info, go to www.edgetechcorp.com

Renay:
David vs. Goliath, the underdog, little guy vs. the big guy, it’s a popular way to tell the entrepreneur story. Big tech names like Microsoft and Dell started out in somebody’s dorm room. In the case of computer memory maker, Edgetech Corp., it was a teenager’s basement. That’s where executives say a personal one on one approach to a billion dollar industry began. And after 23 years, it still dominates Edge’s weekly meetings where all signs point to anything but the status quo.

Good morning.
Morning.

Renay:
Welcome to weekly strategy session for Edgetech Corp which is all about computer memory.

I will say that my impression of last week was that things were really busy. I know that Craig, you had a lot of larger bids. Steve, you had some really nice stuff working last week.

Renay:
Executives here need little prodding to access their memories of 1986 when then 14 year old Jeff Thompson used $2500 saved from his paper route to start the company.

Kandi Sigona:
His dad bought him the computer for Christmas and he decided that he was interested that it was bought from the classifieds and he saw the same computer in the paper going for more than his dad paid for it. So his little mind, he decided he could put it back in the paper and sell it for more. And he did. And it was pretty easy.

Shane Taylor:
I think he quickly discovered that some of the components inside the computers were actually more valuable than the computers he was buying as a whole.

Kandi Sigona:
And boom, he had a business.

Renay:
And Edgetech has grown that business. From computer memory to external hard drives to flash memory and digital media. It’s landed top industry partners like Apple and IBM. But the competition includes much larger companies based in the US and Asia. How has Edge managed to stay on the leading edge?

Kandi Sigona:
If you look at our industry and look at what we do, there should never be a reason on paper why
We should have ever been partnered with some of the industry leaders. Nobody needed another memory company; there were too many memory companies as is. We were trying to partner with the big guys. There was a reason and the reason was that difference. We did business differently.

Shane Taylor:
We are not the biggest; we are not the biggest dog in the hut, so to speak. We really realized that we have to sell our relationships. A lot of companies talk about relationships and then ask them what their strategy is behind developing relationships with their clients; they will inevitably start talking about numbers again, which is really quite separate. Everyone knows to go after the biggest business out there. And we really actually have a system for measuring our relationships with individuals within this channel. I really think this sets us apart.

Kandi Sigona:
We don’t try to be all things to all people. We are very specific with what we want to be a we are very disciplined to that strategy.

Win Cramer:
I think it is different because we get to create those relationships, not only internally, but externally as well and we get to feed that small town vibe up to the rest of the world and I think that works well with our vendors and our customers.

Kandi Sigona:
We want to be everything to a few verses a little bit to everyone. “Average sucks!” That was one of Jeff’s popular sayings back in the early days and it just stuck. It’s really in your face and everybody knows what it means.

Renay:
That kind of approach to business usually starts at the top and that would be President and CEO, Jeff Thompson. It was his basement as to where Edgetech was born when Jeff was 14 years old. Thanks for being here.

Jeff:
Thank you

Renay:
Fourteen is awful young to know that – hey this is the business I’m going to be in and I’m going to build a business out of – How did you know, what were you doing at the time?

Jeff:
Computers really at that time were at hobby for me. And the business started as a hobby. I was buying computers out of the classified section of the newspaper and then the next weekend selling them to someone else thru the same classified ads.

Renay:
So you had a business model already lined up at the age of 14?

Jeff:
I did.

Renay:
Wow! Well things have obviously done well for you since then but you know who you are up against, who the competition is in this particular industry, some big names that spend millions of dollars on advertising. They just have more resources. How are you able to compete against that?

Jeff:
Well, our management team realized early on as a company that it just couldn’t be about dollars for us, because you’re right, we don’t have the dollars that some of our big competitors do. Our job then, as well as today, is to make ourselves someone that sales people within our customers want to do business with. It’s about a personal relationship. It’s very easy to say, but very difficult to execute on.

Renay:
Well, I was going to say, if it’s something as simple as that I would think that there would be a lot of companies out there who have been at a certain industry segment for a while that would say we’ve got good relationships too. Is there something over and above that Edgetech is doing to keep those customers happy?

Jeff:
Yes, it’s a special spark in the people that we hire. And when you meet people that are on our sales team and you contrast them in what you would see in our competitors, you see it. And you see why you as an individual would want to do business with one of my individuals, one of my sales people verses one of these others.

Renay:
OK. Even though there are some global names involved here and everybody wants to get into this space because of the rapid growth in this industry itself, keeping them from stealing away your best customers is a reflection of that relationship???

Jeff:
It absolutely is, it works.

Renay:
Ok, tell me a little bit about how you’ve been able to keep up as a company with the trends in digital memory. I mean we are using more and more of these devices. It’s not just computers anymore. It’s smart phones, wireless handheld devices. This hasn’t been a struggle for you to be able to keep up with all of that kind of growth?

Jeff:
We want to be leading edge, but not “bleeding edge”. We are not out taking a risk with large amounts of capital on something that may or may not work. Once we see something that “has legs”, we are right there offering it. So it’s a challenge but it’s something that in our 24 years we have figured out how to do.

Renay:
Tell me about the next 5 to 10 years in this business. You know, smart phones aren’t going away. There are more and more that are being sold out there and other devices, gaming devices, things of that nature. Where you see the industry going in 5 to 10 years?

Jeff:
Easy answer, honestly; higher capacity, faster, cheaper; the same thing that we’ve seen for the last 30 years. A few years ago we couldn’t have imagined a personal computer sitting on the table in front of us with 4 gigs of RAM in it. It’s extremely common today. So let’s think in the future about 4 terabytes of RAM, because that will happen.

Renay:
I have no doubt, it will. Jeff Thompson, as the President and CEO of Edgetech Corp, thank you so much for your time and good luck with your company.

Jeff:
Thank you.

Renay:
For spark360, I’m Renay San Miguel.