Copyright 1999 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
The
Plain Dealer
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September 23, 1999 Thursday, FINAL / ALL
SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. 1C
LENGTH: 975 words
HEADLINE:
FIRM LEARNS ABOUT GRIEVING, CHANGING, CARRYING ON
BYLINE: By TERESA DIXON MURRAY; PLAIN DEALER REPORTER
BODY:
As a small business in the arduous world of
computers, PerifiTech Inc. has encountered the usual challenges ranging from
cash flow to competition.
But nothing prepared the 29-employee company
for a tragedy that would jolt nearly any business: the sudden death of one of
its two founders.
Roman Przyrowski, like many small-business owners, did
at least four jobs. He died Aug. 9 of a heart attack at age 44.
"Nobody
worked longer or harder than Roman did," said Bill Farkas, who founded the
hardware engineering company with Przyrowski in 1989. "We put a lot of blood and
sweat and tears into this company. If anything now, we're going to get
stronger."
By all indications, PerifiTech this past summer was on the
doorstep of a new era in an industry where it frequently competes against giants
such as Compaq, IBM and Dell.
PerifiTech in June celebrated its
benchmark 10-year anniversary and expects to hit $25 million in sales this year.
It boasts a client list including the United Nations, Ohio State University and
Minolta Corp.
PerifiTech has been enjoying sales growth exceeding 30
percent annually the last few years and is planning a major move from a modest
house in Hinckley to a brand-new building in Aurora.
Now, Farkas knows
Przyrowski's death is testing the Medina County company like it has never been
tested before.
"We have good people here, and there's always been
overlap," Farkas said. "We just need everybody else to step up until I can hire
three or four people."
Although Przyrowski's title was vice president,
the veteran of Intel Corp. served in four separate positions at PerifiTech:
engineer in charge of field service, head of technical support, Web master and
purchasing director.
From PerifiTech's beginnings in Hinckley (where the
owners chose to locate because the company and its employees benefit by not
paying local income taxes) PerifiTech has grown into a respected supplier of
custom network servers - the equipment that serves as the guts for most
businesses' computer systems. Outside of its quiet headquarters, it has offices
in Dayton, Detroit, Los Angeles and Belgium.
One of its key niches is
systems with built-in redundancy and backups for companies that can't afford
downtime. Although these features are fairly common, PerifiTech uses a patented
technology that eliminates device drivers, which are often the cause of network
failures and compatibility problems, said Marketing Manager Keven Fazio.
"The whole idea is if you're going to compete with the giants, you need
to hit them where they ain't," said Farkas, 49, who previously worked for Tandy
Corp. "We don't have 200 people on motorcycles ready to service clients, but we
eliminate the downtime from the beginning."
Michael Mata, president of Q
Integrated Networks Inc. in Cuyahoga Falls, said PerifiTech uses its small
status as an asset.
"If I bought from Compaq, I couldn't call up the
president of Compaq and say, 'I'm having trouble with our server, friend,' said
Mata, who buys $1 million in servers annually from PerifiTech. "My clients
depend on me, so I can't drop the ball because of my supplier. PerifiTech is an
extension of my own business."
That closeness, combined
with the fact that Mata plans to buy $4 million to $6 million in servers from
PerifiTech in the near future, is one of the reasons Mata was rocked by
Przyrowski's death.
"We had some concerns after Roman passed away," Mata
said. "This was a setback for them, like any company that loses someone
critical. The long-term jury is out, but ... if you didn't know they lost Roman,
you wouldn't know it by the way they're conducting business."
PerifiTech's third partner, Bob Kuchta, said observations like those are
a tribute to the company's structure. Like the redundancy built into the
company's products, the owners have tried to hire multitalented employees and
design overlap into jobs.
"Most of our people came from small start-ups,
where you have to know more than you want to know to be able to do your job,"
Kuchta said. "When we're in a crunch, I can call in my guy who does our
shipping, and he knows how to do system testing. He doesn't know how to fix it,
but he knows if it's not right."
Despite this cross-training, Kuchta
said he wishes employees including Przyrowski had better documented processes so
others could understand them. That is changing as employees leave a thorough
paper trail on projects and meet briefly every morning.
"We know we have
to communicate more," he said. "It's better for the business."
The
changes at PerifiTech go deeper than the communication.
"The other thing
that's come out of this unfortunate circumstance is we all used to be here every
night until 9, 10 or even 11 o'clock," Kuchta said. "What Roman's death showed
us is there's more to life than work. Now at 6:30, we kick everybody out. We
say, 'Go home, go be with your families.' At first people resented it. Now they
seem a lot happier when they're at work.'
As PerifiTech rebounds, the
stakes are high for customers like NetGenics Inc. in Cleveland. NetGenics
produces software for pharmaceutical research drug companies in
their discovery efforts, using libraries of genetic information and allowing
researchers in different locations to share data. NetGenics relies on PerifiTech
systems for storing biological data.
"If you lose any data, you could
lose millions of dollars of work," said Scott Scheutzow, technical services
manager for NetGenics. "For a small company like PerifiTech, Roman's death was a
pretty big blow. But there are a lot of smart people over there."
Farkas, who said he has taken a bigger role in sales, has been touched
that customers offered their own technical help during the transition.
"As with any family, when you have a tragedy, the family gets closer
together. We kind of have that here."
GRAPHIC: PHOTO
(color) by JAMIE-ANDREA YANAK / ASSOCIATED PRESS:; Bill Farkas, president and
CEO of PerifiTech, left, and Bob Kuchta, vice president of business technology,
are trying to recover from the loss of their business partner. With them in
their Hinckley headquarters is technician Jim Foran.
LOAD-DATE: September 24, 1999
