replacement components
Power to the people!
There is no good time for
a laptop power supply
to fail, or to find that your
battery has let you down
A decade is probably long enough for a business to establish its We take a closer look at Black Cat
credentials; to follow a course through its chosen marketplace and PC, one of the specialists that has
be judged on its performance. Compared with the average start-up made a successful business out of
company which statistics show is likely to disappear before its third keeping laptop users operational
birthday, any enterprise that can claim to have been in the same line
of trade for ten years merits closer examination.
Enough water will have flowed under the aspiring vendor in the IT arena has to recognition on the part of the manage-
corporate bridge for analysts to assess commit. Delivering power supplies is ment that times were changing for the
objectively the business and those in- one activity where there is no scope for IT user. High profile retailers specialis-
volved in its direction. The fact that second best; where a user’s operations can ing in desktops and laptops were able to
Black Cat PC launched into building and be threatened if a vital part of the IT sys- offer less specialised but nonetheless
maintaining PCs back in 1998, when the tem fails through faulty technology. functional systems. An increasingly
smart money was moving into ‘dot com’ price-conscious personal and SME mar-
and telecoms, makes the company’s
launch and subsequent survival all the
Customised PCs
ketplace found itself driven by cost at
the expense of optimisation.
more appropriate for analysis. Black Cat PC sought out its early cus- Failure to adjust the balance of the
A cursory glance through the CV of tomer base from the South Coast of Eng- business would have found it being sad-
Black Cat’s managing director Rob land where it was located; the majority dled with supporting the resources
Gillibrand would show that he had been of the clients being based in Sussex and needed to achieve the quality goal, but
well placed to take advantage of the still Hampshire. without the volume of business to ab-
burgeoning PC marketplace. Drawing its business from the region, sorb those costs.
Having had a long career in electrical the company was able to work closely While Rob Gillibrand continued to up-
engineering, Mr Gillibrand had devel- with its clients to create personal com- grade the IT solutions of his established
oped an increasingly clear idea of the puters that met their requirements exactly. customer base, his focus evolved to other
business that he wanted to create. More The company was able to achieve parts of the IT ‘space’ where quality re-
specifically, it highlighted the fact that critical mass and establish its trading mained critical, and the market was not
quite small changes in the way that a reputation quickly. But there was also a served well by the High Street names.
business is run make all the difference
between financial disaster and financial
security.
“The main PC resellers have
Evolution to laptop components
found it impossible to stock all of
Throughout its first decade, Black Cat
the dedicated solutions required.
PC has supplied what the company’s
management describes as premium
Instead, they supply multi-plug
quality but cost-effective solutions.
and multi-rated devices – but at
The fact that the focus of the business
has evolved from building custom-built
a very high price. We felt this was
PCs to components – primarily power
supplies for laptop users - suggests a de-
unnecessary when the power
gree of flexibility in its approach which supplies specifically designed for
has ensured the organisation’s survival
in an increasingly competitive arena.
customers’ laptops were
Rob Gillibrand is rightly keen to stress
the quality of his team’s work, but qual-
available and could be supplied
ity is surely one goal to which every
often at less than half the price.”
The Informed Executive
93
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