From Passo Fundo to the world: they earn BRL 40 million with high-performance computer systems

Opened in a garage in 2014, Razor Computers from Rio Grande do Sul is aimed at professionals who work with heavy software, capable of crashing a regular PC.

residents of Deep stepa city of 206,000 inhabitants in northern Rio Grande do Sul, the brothers grégory and André Reichert started a business in their garage eight years ago.

Today, they are at the head of a company valued at 52 million reais and with major clients such as Petrobras, Itaú, Instituto Butantan, Universidade de São Paulo, SAP and Globo.

The Reichert brothers are partners in Razor Computersa reseller of high-performance desktop and laptop computers.

What does Razor do?

Roughly speaking, the high performance category encompasses machines with processors with power well above what is usual in work computers.

Buyers of this type of device are creative economy professionals as:

• architects
• designers
• illustrators
• software developers

They often work with software for image rendering, animation montage, big data exploration and artificial intelligence and other applications capable of crashing a conventional PC.

where did the idea come from

The idea for the business came from a mishap faced by André, at the time focused on his career as an architect and without many options for computers capable of running software such as AutoCAD well for designing buildings.

Brother Grégory, graduated in engineering and systems analysis, at the time was already doing gigs with computer technical assistance and helped André by assembling a machine with the necessary characteristics for the profession.

“When assembling that machine, we saw how difficult it was for a layman to navigate a landscape of thousands of suppliers and component options,” says Grégory. “That’s when I decided to start a business.”

Like many businesses in the Silicon ValleyRazor was born in Grégory’s garage, then 19 years old, and with the proceeds from the sale of a Passat vehicle.

Three years later, his brother André invests 5,000 reais in savings to become a partner in the company.

the business model

Since then, Razor has grown with consultative selling as one of the main differentiators.

As a rule, Razor buys parts in Brazil or from foreign suppliers and then assembles the hardware in its own factory in Passo Fundo upon customer demand.

There is no physical store (sales are 100% online) and Razor ships the equipment throughout Brazil — and abroad as well, if necessary.

Currently, 70% of sales are to companies with many creative economy professionals among their employees. The rest goes to freelancers.

The average ticket is between 20,000 and 30,000 reais per machine. “But equipment worth BRL 290,000 has already been sold and machines worth more than BRL 800,000 have already been budgeted”, says André.

In 2022, Razor should earn 40 million reaistwice as much as last year.

The pandemic collaborated with the growth. With more people working from home, and losing the fear of buying very specific items over the internet, such as high-performance computers, the online sales model implemented by Razor since 2014 took off.

“For the next four years, we expect to grow tenfold,” says Grégory.

Much of the future expansion should come from the sale of laptops, added to Razor’s portfolio in recent months.

Source: Exam