Fervent customer loyalty pays off

With 680 percent growth in sales during the past five years, Future Computer Technologies Inc.

of Sparks is among the fastest growing companies in northern Nevada.

Want to learn how it posted big numbers? Look no farther than a project that doesn't earn Future Computer Technologies a dime in sales or profits.

The company sells printers and supplies and services printers.

Its customers a couple of years ago began asking if Future Computer knew of a place they could recycle used toner and ink cartridges.

Jenifer Rose, the company's chief executive officer, scouted up a couple of outfits across the country that buy used cartridges and hired a part-time employee to pick up used cartridges from customers and ship them to the recycling centers.

The recycling outfits pay Future Computer Technologies $1.50 for a laser toner cartridge and 50 cents for an inkjet cartridge.

Future Computer, in turn, either returns the money to its customers some use it for employee picnics and the like or donates it to Washoe County schools.

This year alone, the schools will get about $10,000 from the effort.

"We're getting hundreds and hundreds of cartridges a month," Rose said last week.

And now she's looking to further expand the program from the approximately 100 businesses that participate today.

What's in it for Future Computer Technologies? No money, but it's another way to demonstrate service to its customers.

Try this example of customer service: The company provides 60-day unconditional returns for cash.

Occasionally, a customer will buy a new copier, find herself with extra cartridges for the old machine and ask if Future Computer will take them for cash.

Yep.

Or try this one: A customer buys a $7,000 machine.

It works just fine, but it's not compatible with the customer's software.

Future Computer tries to get the machine to work with the software but eventually takes the machine back.

Now, it must be sold as used.

That kind of service, Rose said, is an investment that pays off in fervent customer loyalty.

"Once our customers are here, they don't go away," she said.

"They will go out of their way to give us their business."

One customer, for instance, made sure it paid off its balance to Future Computer Technologies in the last days before it filed for Chapter 11 protection and stiffed the rest of its creditors.

Staff members of other customers, facing corporate edicts to buy from competitors of the Sparks company, still manage to find ways to order supplies from Future Computer Technologies.

Loyalty pays off.

The company last year posted revenues profitable revenues, at that of about $1.8 million and this year probably will end well north of $2 million.

Last week, Rose learned the company qualified for the Inc.

Magazine list of fastest growing companies in the nation.

She's particularly proud because the growth has been entirely internal.

No acquisitions to boost revenues here.

The biggest spur to the five-year-old company's growth came when the company refocused its efforts on the local market a couple of years ago.

Unlike many companies that find success in a local market then expand nationwide, Future Computer Technologies began life selling to the national market.

Northern Nevada customers accounted for a miniscule portion of its sales.

Rose and her team saw, however, that plenty of customers were available in northern Nevada and the market didn't have a dominant force in the printer supply and service business.

The upshot? Even as sales have continued to grow quickly, the national business that 18 months ago accounted for 90 percent of the company's business today accounts for about half.

The ranking among Inc.

Magazine's fastest growing companies was among the goals Rose set for itself when she launched the company.

She was working in the wholesale side of the printer industry, spending lots of time away from home, when Rose made a decision: She was willing to work long hours so long as they were flexible hours that allowed her to spend more time with her children.

Rose gathered up some investors and opened the doors at Future Computer Technologies in April 1998.

"It was lot harder than I thought it would be," she said of the company's early years.

"And it took a lot longer."

Careful cost control is a centerpiece of the company's operation.

Future Computer Technologies works from unpretentious 2,400-square-foot quarters 1,200 square feet of office, 1,200 square feet of warehouse in east Sparks.

Rose herself works the phones, taking orders from customers who have no idea she's the company's chief executive.

Even with the company's growth, employment today totals only seven up from four a year ago.

That tiny staff was stretched thin when the company decided to begin recycling used cartridges for customers, Rose recalled.

Because the Washoe County School District would benefit from the program, school officials agreed to let students take home flyers detailing the program.

But, they added, Future Computer Technologies would need to provide 60,000 flyers.

And the flyers would need to be divided into separate packs for each classroom, and the packs of flyers would need to be assembled school by school.

"We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into," Rose acknowledged.

Now that checks regularly head to the schools, the challenging early days seem far away.

"We've proven that the program works," Rose said.