Isogo, an Internet, wireless and networking solutions provider, is making much of its money from second-hand PC hardware. This, says owner Jacques Roelofse, has been a revelation not only to Isogo, but also to its 13 000 customers, who find refurbished PCs a sound proposition, given the high cost of new hardware.
Known also for its Linux solutions, firewall-protected hosted messaging solutions, wireless gear, some of which is locally developed, and Internet hosting, Isogo`s hardware sales form 40% of its R3 million business. Of that, refurbished PCs and other hardware make up 60%.
Isogo sells to individual users and small and mid-sized companies (15 to 20 users). "When you start out as a new company, it doesn`t make sense to fork out R100 000 or R200 000 on hardware if you can pay half or a third of that," he says.
"You can supply 10 PCs to a school for R22 000, instead of much higher," he adds. Two current deals have Isogo selling Acer PCs (Pentium 3, 500MHz, 8.2GB hard drive, 15-inch monitor and 128MB RAM) for R2 200. A Dell (P3, 1GHz, 20GB hard drive, 17-inch flat screen and Windows 2000 licence) costs R4 000.
Acer equipment comes with a default one-month warranty, extensible to six months for an extra 10%. The Dell machines come with a six-month Dell warranty.
"We also sell networking equipment in this way," says Roelofse. "A Cisco 1601 router, normally around R9 000, is R3 000 when bought from us."
To keep costs down, the machines, which are bought back in bulk from companies by entities like Rentworx, are given the same software and hardware configuration. "We ghost the same software configuration on exactly the same machines, to avoid expensive installation and set-up," says Roelofse.
Isogo is four years old, employs six people and operates out of Centurion and Richards Bay.
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