The Remarketer

This week the blog is six months old and today happens to be my seventh anniversary working at Vibrant. To commemorate these milestones, I offer up the following roundup post. Okay, I admit it. This is actually just an excuse to put up a quick post while we work on getting some solid blog posts rolling again.

I enjoy getting a look in at client’s datacenters and operations. It’s almost always impressive to see a large corporations massive and intricately organized server farm or warehouse system. Here are some sneak peeks that have surfaced on the web recently:

After a sabbatical that has lasted far too long, we’re back! Last month my wife and I welcomed our first baby into the world, so I took some time off from contributing to the blog.

Anyhow, I bet you’re wondering what Hockey Pucks and Global IT Business have to do with one another…

Well, we chose to give Hockey Pucks as our Holiday gift to our international clients for 2006. Vibrant has clients throughout the world from South America and Europe to Asia and Australia.
Minnesota is known as the “State of Hockey,” and we thought it would be a fun representation of our headquarters here where the lakes are covered with ice and the ice is covered with skate marks.

Vibrant was very proud to be chosen for the 2006 Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal Fast 50 Private Companies.

Last night, our CEO, Jennifer VanDerHorst (or VanDerHorst-en according to the Fox9 emcee), accepted a giant etched glass obelisk on behalf of Vibrant. It was a fun evening that allowed us to take a brief moment to celebrate our company’s rapid growth over the past two years.

Here’s a little overview of the evening, and what we did to be included on this year’s list.

Scores of businesses have been altered by the presense of auction sites.
How does one handle the eBay effect? You can:

A) Bask in eBay’s afterglow.
B) Hide from the Nuclear Rays, or
C) Let your own soul glow…?

Our company, Vibrant Technologies, buys and sells quality used servers, storage and networking hardware and we have observed the thick of the eBay effect. We’ve mostly chosen not to go with option A in that we don’t market very many products at auction. We also would be daft to ignore the effect that eBay has had on the marketplace, so we aren’t avoiding those nuclear rays, either.

1850 - The first National Women’s Rights Convention is held in Worcester, Mass., attracting over 1,000 participants.

1920 - The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote, is signed into law by the Secretary of State.

1961 - President John Kennedy creates the President’s Commission on the Status of Women and appoints Eleanor Roosevelt as chairwoman.

1963 - Congress passes the Equal Pay Act, making it illegal for employers to pay a woman less than what a man would receive for the same job.

1869 - Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association.

Shipping high-end servers and storage equipment across the country or to the other side of the globe can potentially be a scary proposition if you don’t have a freight forwarder you can trust. At Vibrant, we do all we can to ensure a quality product arrives at our customer’s dock - so choosing reliable freight vendors cannot be overlooked.

Axis Global Logistics is one of these top-notch partners for us and our rep, Chris Kosvic, was kind enough to answer some questions we had on how they ensure safe passage of our valuable products - and what we can do to help them succeed.

It was July 2005, all seemed well with the world and “HP World” was just weeks away. Thousands of HP-UX users were preparing for a week of sessions with fellow Interex users. HP partners had ordered up glossies and banners while used HP 9000 resellers had made arrangements for broker get-togethers. Then, Interex, the independent organization responsible for organizing the user conference, went under and HP World was no more.

“HP Technology Forum 2006″ is the follow-up to last year’s bittersweet replacement conference, and I’m waiting to see whether our clients and partners return from it with the exuberance that they once did from HP World.

Before Best Buy dominated the retail electronics universe, they were a fledgling Minnesota upstart and I was a child of the 80’s lucky enough to have TV Darryl on my side.

Best Buy and the Table of No Return
“Put that back… those returns never work.” An early lesson received from my father at the Best Buy “open box table.” Items were discounted 20-50% because the box was open or sometimes missing altogether. The products would carry notes such as “missing antenna” or “scratched screen.” Anecdotal evidence backed up my father’s theory that purchases of these Walkmans and FM stereos would often result in disappointment.

You want updates on the latest systems and trends. You might wonder - “Why should I heed the words and opinions of a used IT hardware remarketer? They sell equipment from two to three years ago, right?”

I can see where you’re coming from, but the myth that we only sell museum-ready systems is exactly that: a myth. You would be surprised at how quickly the latest models hit our docks. We’re typically stocking servers, routers and storage hardware two weeks to two months after a product is launched. There is more to this question than recency though.

Google says we are; that must count for something, right? A vanity search for “Vibrant” at Yahoo shows they think we’re even more vibrant. Google at least had the sense to place us 2nd to an aftermarket auto parts company. (We can’t argue with that.) Stay tuned for a future collaboration featuring optional ground effects for servers and routers.

From a literal standpoint, Vibrant is our company name and URL. I think the question implies a deeper answer though; how can an IT hardware remarketer, in the land of ice and snow, be bold enough to represent itself as Vibrant?