Cybertron expects $5M sales increase

A Wichita company specializing in assembling and selling personal computers and servers to the education and retail markets says it expects to increase its sales by 50 percent and add 25 more employees, doubling its work force.

The owners of Cybertron International Inc., a seven-year-old firm operating out of an 18,000-square-foot building at 1122 E. Osie, say they expect sales to increase by $5 million and employment to top 50 by year's end as they expand their market.

That expansion will focus on selling its Cybertron-branded desktop PCs, servers and service to companies.

"We're finally at the point in our business that we can focus our energy on local business," says Emad Mekhail, one of three partners in Cybertron, which posted sales of nearly $10 million in 2003 and employs 25.

Ahmed Aziz and Shadi Marcos started the company in January 1997 with $5,000 from their savings.

They set up shop in a two-room suite at the American Financial Center at Kellogg and Rock Road with a single product offering -- a $999 PC system.

At the time, they say, most new personal computer systems were priced well above $1,000.

They say well-known makers of personal computers like Dell, IBM and Gateway were making high margins on their sales.

Those margins were such that Aziz and Marcos believed they could build systems cheaper, sell them at a lower price and still make a profit that would allow them to grow the business.

All the parts, from computer monitors to processors, cabinets and power units are manufactured by other companies.

Cybertron officials say a combination of smart buying, efficient assembly and effective testing of systems has helped them grow the business and develop a good reputation among computer buyers.

"It's just being out there, having our name and performing the good service that we're doing that just brings people back," Marcos says.

From the start, their target market was building desktop computers for small and mid-sized companies.

But through an expansion into school districts in Kansas a year later, followed by the establishment of a Web and e-commerce site for sales to individual users (www.cybertronpc.com), the company focused less on business-to-business and more on the retail and school business.

Now, they say, they are preparing to return to the business-to-business market, selling not just desktop PCs, but desktop and rack servers with customized software.

They'll grow that part of Cybertron's business through an expansion of the company's sales force, which will account for part of the 25 additional employees they expect to have at the end of the year.

Their business has grown to the point, they say, that they have mastered the processes of assembling desktop computers and servers, and testing them before shipping them off to end users.

Now, they can handle larger orders that they expect to come through the corporate market."We pretty much consider ourselves as a small Dell," says Aziz.