AMSYS Computer, with more than 5,000 square feet of showroom, sales, service and training facilities at 900 Ethan Allen Highway in Ridgefield, offers computer sales, installation, networking, service, repair, integration, and application training, and, since its inception in 1987 has grown from a staff of one to a staff of 16.

Founder Ed Heere of Redding reveals that his company's beginnings are entrenched in the photographic and video equipment industry. Mr. Heere spent 18 years working in the industry, first in retail and later in product development, marketing, importing and exporting. He designed, developed and marketed photographic and video equipment for both Beseler Photo and Berkey Photo. "The photographic industry peaked when I was working at Berkey Photo. Everything was going to electronic imaging, and hardware sales for photographic equipment were going to drop," Mr. Heere said, adding that he had put the company into the burgeoning video business by developing - among other things - the video transfer system. In conjunction with SONY, he designed the system that would allow people to have their home movies professionally transferred to video tape.

At that point, Mr. Heere had been "messing" with computers as a hobby since the mid-1970s. He bought a Tandy TRS80, "maxxed it out," and developed and wrote a complete production scheduling and sales forecasting application for it. He used it in his marketing position at Beseler.

"At that time, to get the information you needed from a large computer department in a corporation took months and months and thousands of dollars," Mr. Heere said. "I developed [the applications] so that I could get anything I needed from my little PC. I was pretty much considered strange for doing it, but I had what I needed when I needed it, and that was all that mattered."

In 1981, IBM introduced the first personal computer, and many saw it, Mr. Heere said, as IBM "blessing" the fact that you could have a PC in your office instead of a terminal hooked to a mainframe.

"IBM set the standard for PCs," Mr. Heere said. "The PC really was used for word processing in the beginning; the MIS [management information systems] departments really fought the PCs because it was somebody cutting into their jobs...I saw it as an opportunity."

IBM introduced this PC with something called "open architecture" and invited other companies and users to expand computers using parts from other manufacturers. IBM, up until that point in their mainframe computer business, had proprietary systems, which meant that someone who owned an IBM had to go only to IBM to buy compatible parts and components. IBM PC division was very interested in changing that.

When Mr. Heere was in the Orient on various business trips for Berkey, he started visiting computer parts manufacturers-- to see if he could put together an IBM compatible. "I wanted to build a PC for Berkey to sell: we had the assembly facility, the distribution network, and the sales force to do it."

Mr. Heere got the okay from the company’s Board of Directors to put together a proposal, and he developed and sourced one of the first IBM compatible computers; it would have sold for half the price of the IBM unit and was, Mr. Heere said, 50 percent faster than the IBM PC.

But Berkey didn't go through with it, holding to the belief that no one would want to buy a PC that didn't have the IBM name on it.

A year later, COMPAQ came out with an IBM compatible -and did over $1 billion in business its first year "I stayed on with Berkey for several years as vice president of marketing. .I bailed out just after the company underwent a hostile take-over I had enough to live on for a couple of months, though," Mr. Heere said. "So I started putting together PCs for friends and relatives."

The selling of Mr. Heere's products was immediately profitable, so AMSYS was born. It started out with a room in his Redding home, expanding to 1,000 square feet in the basement divided into offices and assembly areas. He trained people to build and sell PCs for him.

When the company needed to expand, he bought the current facilities on Route 7 (Ethan Allen Highway) and has been growing since.

AMSYS began as a computer manufacturer and still is. The AMSYS brand of computers is manufactured from the highest quality components available from companies like Intel, Western Digital, Seagate, and Maxtor.

"Initially, individuals were more daring than the big companies - people who were free-thinking and saw the value in buying from a no-name company bought from us," Mr. Heere said.

Today, he said, the face of his target market has changed: many individuals are now buying their computers from big box retailers or from mail order catalogs, where price is the only consideration, and most of his computers are now sold to businesses and industry, where, Mr. Heere said, the need for local service and support is recognized.

"As competition drove the prices down, all the support and service that used to come free with the computers and software didn't anymore, because companies couldn't afford to offer those services at no cost any longer - that's the reason our business is going and growing: PC users recognize the need for, understand, and appreciate quality professional support."

AMSYS Computer sells and services AMSYS brand of computers as well as national brands. It specializes in the installation and support of Novell, Windows-NT, and LANtastic local area networks and UNIX systems of any size from two to 500-plus workstations, they also service, upgrade and repair most brands of IBM compatible computers. Carry-in, pick-up and on-site service is available.

"We're also the largest IBM PC dealer in northern Fairfield County," Mr. Heere said. "We do work closely with IBM in providing total solutions for small- and medium-sized businesses, schools, and municipalities."

AMSYS sells other national brands at discounted prices also: IBM, COMPAQ, NEC, AST, Hewlett Packard, Toshiba, Epson, and other brands of TBM compatible systems, printers and accessories.

AMSYS can arrange both formal training classes and individual tutoring at is training facility in Ridgefield, or on-site training is available at a client's location. Both standard curriculum and custom courses can be provided.

Mr. Heere, a graduate of and former instructor at Albright College in Reading, Pa., stays connected in the community around him; he heralds many professional and business affiliations. He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Connecticut/Westchester Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery, the Better Business Bureau of Danbury, and the Chambers of Commerce in Ridgefield and Danbury as well as the Greater Valley Chamber of Commerce. He is also a voting member of the national Association for Computing Machinery.

In addition, Mr. Heere is a director and current chairman of the board of directors of the Danbury Area Computing Society [DACS], a 900-member, non-profit association of computer users. He has been featured in 1989's Who’s Who in the Computer Industry, 1991's Who's Who of American Business Leaders, and 1992's Who's Who in Connecticut.

Recent talks have included presentations to the Connecticut Division of the Association of Enrolled Agents, Connecticut MENSA, the Westchester Board of Realtors, Northern Fairfield County Association of Realtors, the Danbury and Ridgefield Rotary Clubs and the Ridgefield Men's Club as well as the Danbury Chamber of Commerce many other organizations and professional groups.

Today, Mr. Heere's company has a client list in the thousands. AMSYS clients include IBM, UPS, the Xerox Corporation, Pitney Bowes, General Electric, Pepsi Cola, the

Falcon Jet Corporation, and Danbury, Norwalk, Middlesex and Stamford Hospitals, to name a few.

"We continue to survive and flourish in this competitive market because we’ve segued this business from a box-builder into a complete computer service company providing total information management outsourcing...for a wide range of businesses," Mr. Heere said. "If you want to survive in the computer industry, you have to change as quickly as the industry does."