By CRAIG GILBERT
The new owners of one of Northern Ontario’s most unique and successful companies are openly optimistic they can double their revenue by 2008.
Over the course of 25 years, Dr. Brian McGaffney built North Bay’s Nortek Computers Ltd. into a global leader in data and password recovery and drive repair. On March 1, he officially sold the company he started in a 200-square-foot office to Bob Everest, former vice-president and general manager of Persona Communications in Sudbury, and Todd Muzyka, the owner of Sudbury’s Computrek and CDS Ltd., a custom development house.
The partners (Everest became president and Muzyka vice-president) boast over 40 years of combined experience in the information technology (IT) sector. Their expert eyes see nothing but potential in the company, which has grown to occupy two full buildings and employ 30 people.
Each of Muzyka’s companies employs 21 people as well, placing the total number of employees under his watch in the region of 70 and climbing.
“This thing should be doubled by 2008,” Muzyka says. “That is very attainable.”
Nortek’s foundation as an engineering company has helped it to stay aggressive in the face of a challenge. Its nature is to work through a problem and come out stronger because of it. If there isn’t a best practice established for the service a client is looking for, they invent it.
“Never say no is definitely our business philosophy,” Everest says. “We’re always tackling new stuff.”
Working through a new problem for a client may not make the company any money in the short term, but once the process has been developed (and in many instances patented), it becomes just one more item in Nortek’s stable of services.
“You fall on your sword, pull yourself off and keep going,” says Muzyka.
The engineering team has everything to do with the company’s success in that department, Everest points out. The shortest-serving employee in that department has been there for 15 years. Many have over 20 years of service, and some have been there since the start in 1981.
Added to this are the products and services the staff at CDS and Computrek developed over the past 20 years.
Muzyka says he is confident there are some major synergies to be realized between his three companies.
“We still utilize knowledge that has been developing since people started using hard drives in the 1980s,” Muzyka says. “These guys have been up to their eyeballs in technology for so long they have become global leaders.”
Like any company with real, live employees these days, Everest says the biggest inhibitor to growth is the growing shortage of qualified people.
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that Everest and Muzyka have to keep in mind the unique synergy the well-established team has developed over the last two decades or so. Adding the wrong person to the mix would throw off their balance quicker than the Edmonton Oilers lost their starting goalie in the Stanley Cup Finals last month.
“I spent 15 years in Toronto, and I have a lot of contacts down there,” says Everest. “Hopefully we can lure some people we know back here.”
Muzyka adds that the quality of life around and about North Bay is a major selling point in recruiting.
Nortek has built a name for itself on the global stage by working on large contracts with household names such as IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and Compaq. While maintaining their international presence, the new ownership team plans to focus more on Northern Ontario as they move the company forward.
“We’re a worldwide company, but we’re Northern. We want to focus on the local market more and build our customer base,” says Everest. “There is a big untapped market here.”
Into that and the wider North American and global markets, where Nortek finds little competition, will flow new products and services. There is a lot of stuff coming down the pike, according to Muzyka. Some of it is “off the beaten path” for Nortek, he says, but will keep the company sustainable for years to come.
“Our guys can’t sit still,” says Everest. “They’ll take anything on.”
