Chris Malisse is a driven salesman and ideas man with a gift for the voluble pitch and mechanical aptitude. That combination has served him well at the company he founded in Westchester County in 2000, while earning a good living as an independent manufacturer”™s representative selling flat-panel LCD monitors.
At Ergotech Group Inc. in Elmsford, Malisse in just a few years has led his small company on a global charge to become the leading provider of multiple-screen flat-panel mounting systems for the trading desks of financial services firms. “From the smallest hedge funds to the biggest investment firms in the world, we either do their business or we”™re in the bidding and evaluation process to do their business,” he said in his office in the Cross Westchester Executive Park, where an Ergotech mounting arm anchored a raised flat-panel screen to his desk.
“We are technology mounting specialists,” Malisse said, slowly enunciating his description with a salesman”™s relish. This year his company plans to further extend its reach among multiple-screen and large-screen flat-panel users in a range of businesses and government centers while making Ergotech a brand name among consumers with a still-secret new product designed for work stations in both homes and offices.
With annual revenue just under $10 million and growing, Ergotech has a client list that includes Bank of America, Wachovia Corp., Citibank, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley in Manhattan and the Royal Bank of Scotland. Its breakthrough came in 2003, when the company did $2 million in business on two projects for Wachovia and Bank of America, said Malisse, who had remortgaged his house in Yorktown to finance the making of his multiscreen system. In 2006, Bank of America contracted with the 22-employee company to provide its multiple-mount equipment for 2,900 trading desks in the new Bank of America Tower in midtown Manhattan.
That installation is nearly completed, Malisse said last week. In early February, Ergotech will begin installing 4,500 mounts for non-trading work stations in the new Bank of America offices.
“This is the biggest product in the financial market today,” Malisse said of the company”™s multiple-screen, single-plane mounting apparatus. It is manufactured in China, where Ergotech invested $100,000 to tool three plants for production of its multiscreen line. Designed by Malisse for the trading floor, where speed is critical, it includes a quick-release mounting pivot, for which Ergotech has a patent pending, that attaches to the back of a display monitor and detaches easily from mounting bars. No tools are needed to remove and reposition monitors and expand the mounting device vertically and horizontally.
The mounting apparatus is manually operated with a lead screw crank. “Trading does not want any single point of failure,” Malisse explained. “So you don”™t introduce electronics. They built the pyramids with this technology. It”™s about as old as the fulcrum and the wheel.”
Malisse won”™t let his company”™s products grow old in service, however efficient they are. “We”™ve got two competitors coming after us fast,” he said. We like that. Because when they”™re running, I”™m out front. I”™m coming up with new things.”
“A lot of people say, ”˜If it ain”™t broke, don”™t fix it,”™” said Steven Solomon, Ergotech”™s executive vice president for sales and marketing. “We have a completely different look at things.”
In about two months, Ergotech plans to market another flat-panel mounting system designed to hold larger screens and requiring no tools to assemble and adjust. Designed for both strength and aesthetics, it “cleans up” the industrial look of Ergotech”™s current multiscreen mounting hardware, likened by some to a “sausage press,” Malisse said.
“There”™s nothing like this on the market,” Solomon said. “By the time the competition catches up to this, we”™ll be two or three generations down the line.”
“We”™re going back to Royal Bank of Scotland this afternoon with this,” Malisse said, demonstrating a prototype in the company”™s workshop. “They love it.” He and Solomon hope RBS executives love it enough to install it at desks on their 95,000-square-foot trading floor being built in Stamford, Conn.
The flat-panel screen market is growing at an annual rate of 60 to 80 percent, Solomon noted. “It will be all flat screens in the very near future,” Malisse said.
Prices are plummeting. A 19-inch flat-panel screen today costs from $150 to $200, compared to $3,500 for an 18-inch screen when flat panels, in a westward global migration, entered the U.S. financial services market in the late ”™90s, Malisse said. “You could put 25 to 30 percent more traders in the floor space by going to flat-screen monitors,” he said.
In the larger market, “We have a big portion of a small niche,” Solomon said. “The whole market is huge. It”™s probably 10 times, 20 times greater than financial trading.”
Ergotech already has its products used by municipal 911 emergency centers ”“ including a Royal Canadian Mounted Police station ”“ private security firms, call centers and the Hollywood film industry, “and we”™re just scratching the surface,” Malisse said. Company officials are eyeing too the point-of-sale market for large-screen display panels in retail stores. “It”™s a business we”™re not even in now,” Solomon said. “There are so many screens that need to be mounted.”
“This product was always considered in the past as an accessory to a desk,” he said. “There is no branding at all in this marketplace, and yet we look at that all day. We want to get this product out from an accessory status to a technology status. This is a necessity for computers.”
The screen-mounting product “is not just a space saver, it”™s a health saver,” Solomon said. “It”™s an ergonomic issue.”
“You have to change the mindset,” Malisse said.
“There isn”™t anybody doing that,” Solomon said. “We want to put a face to the brand and that”™s our challenge in the next couple years.”
Newly branding itself in the ergonomic technology market, Ergotech in a few months expects to introduce a “workspace organizer” for which it has a patent pending. “They”™re toolless, they”™re expandable,” Solomon said, describing the as yet unveiled product as the first in a line of “productivity tools.”
“This will be successful,” Malisse predicted. “This technology will double our core business.”
Its screen-mounting business led the Elmsford company to recently open a London office to serve its European Union clients and many of its clients”™ Pacific Rim business operations. Malisse said he is looking to buy a building in Westchester for the growing company, which nine months ago expanded into 6,000 square feet of leased space in the Cross Westchester Executive Park.
“Our roots are here and we”™re going to grow our roots deeper,” Malisse said. ?
