Buffalo’s resident tablet manufacturers, Bak USA, are kicking off their 2018 by celebrating a few key milestones.
Not only will they reach a 3-year anniversary mark, but they’ve hired over 100 employees during that time.
Their very first hire—Bilel Neji—said he’s seen plenty of evolution and transformation during those three years, not only to the company, but to the city he’s called home since he attended the University at Buffalo.
“We would have those seminars where people would tell us, ‘Hey, don’t go downtown at 8:00 pm and above by yourself, it’s a little scary,’” said Neji. ”Three years after that, everything changed.”
Now, according to Neji, there’s a new energy building technology and aspiring startup companies throughout Buffalo, and Bak USA caught that energy at the perfect time when they settled into Buffalo’s old Sheehan Memorial Hospital.
“We want to repurpose. We don’t believe in bringing jobs back, we believe in creating brand new types of jobs,” said Christian Bak, the company’s Vice President of the company’s Product Team.
But the question remained: would the Bak USA model work?
The Bak family had found previous success in Haiti after their devastating 2010 earthquake, not only helping to rebuild homes and structures, but to provide work for people who needed money at their tablet-processing facility.
Moving that same model to America was a completely different story.
“We’re going to manufacture tablet PCs and technology devices in the United States?” said Alan Rosenhoch, Director of Business Development at Invest Buffalo Niagara, who questioned the idea when the Bak family first proposed it to him. “I mean that really hadn’t been done.”
But Rosenhoch admits the Bak family’s pitch was a very passionate and realistic one; he knew very early on that he wanted Buffalo to be the home of their ambitious new business idea.
And after three years, he sees all the signs that it was the right call to make.
“You see consistent growth of workforce, and of square footage,” said Rosenhoch. “They have outgrown their space.”
Along with their 100 employees in less than 3 years, Bak USA has also notched successful partnerships with Intel, Microsoft, and Verizon, among others.
Bak said he believes a big part of the success comes from the “grit” they’ve found in all of their Western New York employees.
“Everybody is rooting for one another, and it was very clear, early on, that this is not a town looking for failures, its not looking for yet another company to fail and leave,” said Bak, “Its looking for success stories.”
“Grit, I think, is a good word to describe the residents of our city,” Rosenhoch agreed.
The positioning of Buffalo’s blossoming tablet business also creates a natural stopgap for people looking to work in the technology field, giving them an option closer to the east coast without traveling to Seattle, or Houston, or even Silicon Valley, who are all well-known hotspots in the technology sector.
And according to Bak, he also wants their company to take up a leadership role for other companies looking to thrive in Buffalo.
“We want product developers to be building small cameras for us, and we want them to be doing it right next door,” said Bak. “We want to create ecosystems where startup companies can come in and, on they can our back and with our assistance and our help, they can actually enter into this tech field and they don’t have to move 3,000 miles across the country.”
But Neji was quick to point out not only do those bigger cities fail to provide the “family” feeling he gets at Bak USA, but the opportunities might not be as bountiful.
“If I was working for a company like Intel or Qualcomm,” said Neji, “it would take me forever to be the Director of Engineering. I have done that within 3 years at Bak USA.”