Creative Strategy Drives White-Box Maker's Business

John Samborski, CEO of Ace Computers, is a true white-box solution provider, and he's happy with his company's current sales and profit. What sets Samborski apart? He uses a bit of imagination to create solutions that endear him to existing customers and drive incremental business.

Ace, an $18 million, 19-year-old company based here, has developed three disparate solutions: an ultraquiet PC, a flight simulator and high-bandwidth cabling for the home market.

Despite his enthusiasm, Samborski is blind to the rotten economy. Over the past year, he has seen technology spending for Ace's two focus markets,government and education technology,slashed. Instead of crying over lost business, Samborski has refocused his efforts and expanded his market reach.

He partnered with other solution providers in the Chicago area, such as Comark, to build orders the partners can't handle. Ace also gained new end-user customers through its reputation of building specialized systems.

It was while in the middle of some cheap but effective marketing that Ace discovered a new niche in radio. The company, which sponsors a late-night technology program on a local radio station, kept hearing the station's staff complain about noisy Dell Computer systems, Samborski said. In the past, he had designed quiet systems, built with specialized Zero EMI Siemens cases, for the health-care industry.

Back at his shop, Samborski built even quieter workstations for the station using acoustical insulation, a tailored motherboard BIOS that controlled the cooling fans and an ultraquiet Western Digital Whisper Drive. The Ace Whisper Pro system, which runs at less than 20 decibels, was born. For comparison, a quiet night in the countryside is about 25 decibels and a normal conversation is about 65 decibels.

Over the past year, Ace has sold about 300 Whisper Pros, which bring in margins in the high teens. And by pitching the systems over the radio show, Samborski picked up lucrative accounts with a manufacturer of computerized microscopes and the Federal Aviation Administration.

"By getting into specialized solutions and showing the customer we're very willing to do what it takes to earn their business instead of expecting their business, they started to look at us for other things," Samborski said.

Ace is also flying high with a $9,500 flight simulator it created last year. The company, which has an office across the street from United Airlines' corporate headquarters in Oak Grove, Ill., got the idea to build the simulators from several customers who happened to be retiring pilots interested in opening flight schools.

"Training on live planes is very expensive, but the FAA allows students to learn on simulators as long as they meet certain criteria," Samborski said. "We got the criteria, developed the system and acquired the FAA-approved software."

Ace has sold about 50 of the systems, although it temporarily pulled the product in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The company plans to start selling it again this summer.

Meanwhile, the solution provider is breaking into the high-bandwidth residential market. Ace has partnered with Panduit, Belden Wire, Cisco Systems, Intel and a cable networking manufacturer to wire new homes and commercial buildings with Cat-6 cable.

Ace, which has already wired about 250 homes, also signed exclusive deals with three area contractors that build between 50 and 350 new homes a year. The key to a successful partnership in that market is to cut a revenue-sharing deal with the contractors, Samborski said.

"Our customers like the fact that we're a hands-on company," he said. "Our business has done well by the services we provide, but we've always put more focus on 'customer care.' That's something the big boys haven't figured out."