Networks, CPUs, scanners... and the cry of gulls

If there is such a thing, it was a normal day at Harbour MicroTrends...

Mike Phillips came in early, propped open the door to catch the breeze off the nearby Bay, and settled down to work. By 9 o'clock, four customers had already popped in to chat or browse, the open door an invitation despite the sign on the door that says he doesn't open till 9:30. Around then, he took a call from a Toronto colleague, and began discussing business. But after a few minutes, his caller suddenly changed the topic: "Are those seagulls I hear?"

"Tell the truth," said his colleague. "Are you on your boat?"

Mike laughs, recalling the story today. "But you know," he says, "It's not really that far-fetched. With the network support we do, a problem occurs, your pager tells you before the client knows about it, you log in, fix it and log off. You can literally sit out on a boat with a notebook and be fully functional." While he hasn't yet explored this sunny scenario, he occasionally boats to work from his lakefront home, docking at the harbour and walking the block to his main street store.

It was the water that first brought him to Meaford, years ago. And when he was downsized out of a Markham mainframe manufacturer in 1993, his Meaford cottage became his temporary home.

He planned to stay for Christmas and start pounding the pavement in the new year. "But after two or three trips to meet contacts, I realized I didn't even really want to be in Toronto, so why was I looking for a job there?" says Mike.

And so his retail computer equipment/consulting operation was born. "I planned it so I could stay for a year without making money; the initial intent was to do repairs, have some hardware to grab a few people in, find out who was doing what, and make my money in consulting."

But something happened. People were calling and knocking on the door before he could get the paper off the windows for his grand opening. He sold three truckloads of demo equipment before he had a chance to set it up in the store. And in his first quarter he exceeded a quarter million dollars in gross hardware sales.

"Getting set up and running here was wonderfully easy," says Mike. "I had lots of support from just about everybody: local council members, business owners. In my first few months ten percent of the businesses in Meaford had purchased equipment. They'd literally thanked me for opening up."

While Mike was concerned at first he'd have to hold a lot of hands for new users, he's been impressed by the sophisticated use of computers in the area. "I've had a lot of business to business type sales... educated users."

Of course, being this busy has left a little less time for the idyllic lifestyle Mike had envisioned, but when the day's over he's back at his old cottage, his boat waiting at the dock. "You have to keep your perspective," he says, eyeing a sail on the horizon. "It's easy to take all this for granted, sometimes you have to sit back and let it all sink in."