New Biz Startup (10/03)

If you want to track down North Bay's newest young entrepreneur you might have to pull him out of his high school math class.

Ken Euler runs Kenbe Connections, a computer repair and home network installation company specializing in custom-built PC systems.

A graduate of the city's My Summer Company, the 17-year-old Grade 12 Chippewa Secondary School student heard about the program during school announcements and went down to city hall to sign up with a business idea to customize computers.

With city staff mentoring him on accounting, advertising and marketing, he dedicated about 20 hours to craft a business plan and launched the company in June. He launched the business with $1,250 in program startup money and set up some cubicle space in the rear of his father's civil engineering office in east-end North Bay.

"The business is a mix between computer sales and repairing," says Euler. He installs mother boards, processors, adds memory and video cards, as well as sells or installs accessories, including printers, scanners, keyboards, sound cards, MP3 players, networking, firewalls, CD-Rom and DVD Drives.

Through a connection with a Markham-based computer wholesaler and distributor, he buys computers worth $2,100 and sells them for $2,800, pocketing about $400 after sales taxes.

"Mostly I get repair jobs, which takes about a half hour each and I make about $35 or $40."

The business was doing so well he decided to continue into his final year of high school.

"We kept on making more money. It takes more than two months to get a client base going and by the end of August we kept getting more jobs so we just figured to keep on going."

His client base started with family and friends before branching off into advertising flyers stuffed into homeowner mailboxes, "but mostly it was by word of mouth."

"Every couple of days I'm getting a new quote. I have lots of work with about 20 or 30 (jobs) and it just keeps getting bigger every day," he says, with a cell phone strapped to his hip.