VAR Finds Its Niche

Alex Sonis started his first computer business back in 1998 out of his truck, driving computers and components to sell at weekend road shows around the Midwest. As e-commerce took off, Sonis decided to stop driving and start selling machines on the Internet.

Sonis found, however, that the home/office market soon became tough with the likes of Dell advertising prices he couldn't compete with, so he decided to seek out niche markets that required a high level of build-to-order customization. "Dell lowered its prices and killed so many different companies ... we started to specialize."

While Sonis has operated under various names, his latest incarnation, AVADirect, Twinsburg, Ohio, has been making a name for itself in the hot gaming market, building custom gaming machines, workstations and servers, some of which are used by the military as training simulators.

Sonis reported that AVADirect's unit sales were up 47 percent to about 11,900 units last year, making it the fifth-fastest-growing company on the CRN Leading System Builders list. He reported $8 million in revenue.

"The most growth that came to us came from increasing demand for the custom solutions—the extreme custom solutions—and also the Department of Defense and defense companies like Lockheed Martin," Sonis said. "We've been doing custom workstation simulators for the troops to train on. We're in that pretty heavily."

Building extreme build-to-order gaming machines, workstations and servers is not his only secret. AVADirect also has extreme pricing. Sonis said being price-competitive has been important in helping the company build a market and name for itself. "We're not making that much of a profit," he said. "But we're doing it to get as many customers as possible in our corner."

A Lockheed Martin spokesperson confirmed the company buys systems from AVADirect, but would not comment on a vendor as a matter of policy. Another defense contractor, though, Resolute Partners, said it buys systems from AVADirect for the "Cyberzones" that it operates at U.S. military bases around the world, where troops can play games and access the Internet. Aubry Braithwaite, senior network administrator with Resolute, said the company has already spent $200,000 with AVADirect this year and could spend $450,000 to $500,000 with AVADirect by year's end.

"AVA has done a really good job," Braithwaite said. "They're very customer oriented. Whatever you need from them, they're very timely. He has a really good product. It's nice, neat, attentive to detail."

He said AVADirect's prices were in line with what the company had been paying with its previous vendor and that AVADirect offered a better warranty. Braithwaite also said AVADirect makes sure the systems Resolute buys are on the cutting edge. "They're on the pulse of changing technology when it comes to processors," he said.

Computer game developer 1st Playable Productions also goes to AVADirect when looking for custom gaming machines. "The main reason we choose their computers is because we don't have the time or resources to build all of the computers ourselves, but we want very specific parts that aren't available from the major manufacturers," said Tim LoGiudice, gaming software developer at the Troy, N.Y.-based company.

1st Playable has purchased about 40 systems from AVADirect and buys custom PCs in groups of four or eight whenever new employees are brought on to develop games. Most are dual-core Advanced Micro Devices systems with 2 Gbytes of RAM, 250-Gbyte hard drives and DVD burners, but some have quad-core processors.

LoGiudice said AVADirect's systems have been reliable, and those with glitches were quickly repaired. As for AVADirect's prices, they're hard to beat. "They're only slightly higher than just purchasing the parts at retail," he said. "The prices we get are pretty amazing."

For Sonis and AVADirect, the gaming and government markets will hopefully continue to drive growth in the future. "We're going to continue being in custom gaming, and we're going to push that as much as possible," he said.

That goes double for the Department of Defense and government market. "They can really bring us revenue and profit, and also they're really interesting to work with," he said.