Seamless Data Systems has blossomed since the fall of 1999 from a part-time, sideline business for Jim Belford to a successful full-time business, with a partner added, a total of eight employees, and a newly remodeled and expanded headquarters.
The company moved in May from its third-floor quarters in the Bank of America building to its new office space at 710 Industrial Road, the former location of Lyon-Coffey County Electric.
“It wasn’t very convenient, up and down the elevator, up and down the stairs, because we’re very much a come and go organization,” Belford said of the former bank location.
Parking, too, was extremely limited, so the partners were happy to buy the building, divide it into office and work spaces, and add on enough space for more offices, a small conference room and a garage with space to store larger equipment.
“It was basically just one shell of an office with a (dividing) wall that held the building up,” Belford said.
The new nest of offices, plus a 1,200 square-foot addition, now can hold 10 employees, with a lab area to work on computers and a garage behind to keep the components from being exposed to the weather when they’re loaded and unloaded for repairs or re-sale.
“We were running out of space and kinda falling all over ourselves in the other building,” Belford said.
Belford’s wife, Karen, also bookkeeper for the company, decorated the offices with sleek and shapely modern furniture and decorations, with paintings and other artwork groupings featuring bright geometric shapes and patterns.
“She’s got a brilliant eye for that stuff,” Bedford said.
The new office has a break room with refrigerator, microwave, table and chairs, and a spacious storage room with shelves that already are almost full.
“Like always, you wonder how you’re going to fill one space, then pretty soon, you’re finding a way,” Belford said.
Part of the equipment is from the core business, which continues to provide repair services for individuals and businesses, from basic virus removal and adding memory to more complicated repairs and systems, like building and maintaining corporate networks for larger customers.
Seamless is a re-seller partner with the Dell computer company, Belford said.
“We can still get the XP operating system that most people can’t buy from the store,” said partner Allen Uttinger, who joined the company in November 2001.
Seamless engineers, including Belford and Uttinger, are certified as Microsoft and Novell engineers.
“If it has to do with a PC or data, we can do it, top to bottom,” Belford said.
The company also added high-speed broadband Internet service to county residents, using a wireless system that provides faster service than satellites, the men said.
Uttinger said wireless is faster, because it doesn’t have to make the 23,000-mile round trip from earth to satellite back to earth; cloud cover also does not affect wireless, and overcrowding, with its subsequent slow-downs, can be solved by widening the space use on the broadband.
“We are the only truly broadband provider,” Uttinger said. “... We replaced several sets of radios recently to get more band capacity.”
Seamless uses 10 towers scattered throughout the county to handle the signals and serve approximately 1,100 square miles of territory in Lyon County.
The computer service, however, remains a focus for both partners, who continue to work in the field daily on computer repairs and building systems.
“And we always will,” Belford said.