Falcon Electronics is a Johannesburg IT infrastructure industry success story. Celebrating its 21st birthday in 2005, this organization is riding the wave of buoyancy currently being enjoyed by the SA infrastructure industry, and is confident that the levels of activity currently being experienced will continue for at least the next two years, despite predictions from economists that the economic cycle will turn sooner than that.
Says Mervin Scorgie, Falcon marketing manager: "I think the entire infrastructure industry is in a golden era right now, there is a massive amount of spend happening. Cape Town is a market absolutely bursting at the seams with opportunity... no less than five new hotels are scheduled to be ready by 2007! I am concerned about when it might turn, but do not expect this to happen for at least another two years."
Falcon began as a small garage operation, run by Anthony Sauls and his wife Katherine, and quickly became large enough to move into its first building in Selby. It continued to show steady expansion, and soon opened branches in Cape Town and Durban, with Bloemfontein being added last year.
Under pressure from competitors in the local environment, Falcon opened its own manufacturing facility to satisfy the requirements of its own customers, a move which has since turned into a significant portion of the organization"s business. It later opened CTC Corona in Pretoria to cater entirely to the fiber side of the data infrastructure industry.
"The core values on which Falcon is built, are firstly not to go for the cheapest materials. We only use virgin materials in all our products. We also always carry the complete line of products which we represent, not just a product set. There are currently over 7 000 line items on our system, which has earned us the reputation that you can get anything from Falcon, for solutions in any sector," continues Scorgie.
From humble beginnings, the organization has grown to occupy facilities covering 20 000 square meters, and is currently focusing on formalizing distribution channels in other stable African markets. "Even with the strong Rand, exporting infrastructure equipment into Africa is a compelling opportunity at the moment, so we will be focusing a lot of our attention in this area," Scorgie adds.
The organization currently distributes Brother testing equipment and the full range of Systimax solutions, the high end of which is currently experiencing exciting times with the introduction of 10GbE over copper cabling systems. Falcon also manufactures its own racking solutions, and hopes to win a significant portion of the Sita racking business currently being tendered for during 2005.
Concludes Scorgie: "We are very proud of where we have come in 21 years. We are a black-owned company, whose staff does not consider themselves to be PDIs. In human life, 21 years is the celebration of maturity, and this year we are inviting our customers to celebrate our maturity as an organization."