YOU’D PROBABLY TELL US WE ARE CRAZY.
In 1994, I formed my first company, servicing IT equipment out of my basement. This was the early days of the personal computer market — think America Online and unsolicited install discs promising 1,000 hours of free internet — and everything was moving fast. But it wasn’t long before I noticed I had a problem on my hands. We were accumulating a lot of stuff — most of it end-of-life and obsolete IT equipment, from desktop CPUs to fax machines to printers. It was overwhelming.
What would you do if I told you to shut your laptop and put it in the garbage? You’d probably tell me I’m crazy. But that was basically what we were dealing with — hundreds of perfectly good IT assets piling up in our office. Often, critical data like tax returns were still stored on them for anyone to access. How could someone just toss to the curb such an incredible piece of engineering? How could they throw away valuable resources just because the product was three years old?
I realized then I was a part of the problem. Since that point, my all-consuming passion has been solving the crisis of electronic waste. In 2012, I founded Filmar Technologies with my wife, Maria, as my first employee. We buy and sell IT assets with a mission of recycling, reusing and protecting our clients’ investments. We try to prevent any electronic equipment from ending up in a landfill. We learned this takes creativity, adaptability and a global network of buyers and suppliers.
After founding, Filmar grew fast as I explored my other passion: helping people. We saw that amid the challenges of IT waste disposal were opportunities to change the world for the better. Yes, Filmar takes its customers from states of disarray to up-and-running, but for mere dollars we also can outfit a computer considered out-of-date in the U.S., and put it in the hands of a child in the developing world.
My wife and our leadership team have helped build a family-owned company into one that does business on six continents and strengthens our clients’ interests by providing the most secure environment and quality equipment at the lowest possible price, all with family-owned service. As humans use more electronic equipment and store more of their sensitive data on these devices, Filmar becomes more involved in solving an urgent worldwide problem.
Filmar Technologies LLC
