By Elizabeth Cloutman
Hula Networks buys, sells and trades networking hardware and phone systems
About two months ago, three friends - Joe Commendatore, Scott Hobin and Steve Robinson - sat relaxing on a Maui beach pondering the future of their careers.
“We all agreed this is what life is all about - the aloha spirit, enjoying family and friends,” Commendatore said. It was then the three Mountain View residents hatched the idea of launching their own company. They decided to call the company Hula Networks.
They opened the company in Mountain View, where Hobin and Commendatore have lived their entire lives. The two men have been friends since age 10 and attended Mountain View High School and then Chico State University together. Robinson, a Boston native, initially decided to move to Silicon Valley because his wife was from San Francisco and wanted to return to the Bay Area.
Commendatore, Hobin and Robinson, all in their early 30s, had been successful salesmen for a direct value-added reseller that partnered with Cisco Systems for hardware and engineering services, but they were not really satisfied with corporate life. “We all quit our jobs, not sure at all of what we were going to do,” Hobin said. “We had just had enough. We interviewed at various companies and decided another corporate job wasn’t for us.”
As salesmen, they had witnessed the surplus of networking and phone system equipment as numerous companies downsized, underwent financial hardship or failed - or when successful companies upgraded their hardware. There was an ideal market for purchasing this essentially new hardware and reselling it to other companies at more affordable prices. “We were losing our market to used equipment,” Commendatore said, referring to his previous job.
They also knew customers would appreciate the opportunity to receive trade-in value for their old equipment when they purchased upgrades.
Each man chipped in $100,000 of his own money, and just two weeks later they launched Hula Networks as a business, selling multiple products, including telephones, switches, routers, PBX systems and computer firewalls. “We do the entire IT infrastructure, any hardware that does connectivity,” Commendatore said.
Judging by Hula Networks’ initial success, Commendatore, Hobin and Robinson appear to be correct in their assumptions about the needs of the business market. “We’ve shipped to numerous states, Canada, England, Haiti, Austria and Mexico, to some Fortune 500 companies,” Hobin said. “Our growth has been tremendous. We’ve already grown 300 percent in revenue.”
Robinson added, “Our customers could see it was valuable to buy (equipment) a year old and have another three or four years of usefulness.”
Hula Networks currently contracts professional engineers and technicians to install systems, but the three partners hope to hire full-time employees as the business continues to grow.
The business partners said that in developing Hula Networks, they have enjoyed learning all aspects of networking systems, despite some long hours.
Even as their business grows, they intend to keep the friendly, casual aloha spirit.
“We want it to be a pleasant experience for our customers,” Commendatore said. “We show up at a company wearing Hawaiian shirts, shorts and flip-flops - with a cashier’s check in hand. That’s our MO.”
To emphasize the aloha spirit and show appreciation for their customers, Hula Networks is currently offering a special promotion effective to the end of this year.
A customer who makes either a single purchase of $100,000, or a combined purchase of $200,000 within the calendar year - of networking equipment and service - will receive two free airplane tickets to Hawaii.
For more information or to contact Hula Networks, logon to www.hulanetworks.com.
