Soldotna's computer competitor.

• Author: Thomas, Margaret
• Position: Mike Treat

Mike Treat has taken a byte out of Anchorage's computer retail market. He owns Computer Concepts: Connecting Point, the Soldotna franchise of a national computer store chain. A cabinetmaker until just three years ago, the 36-year-old Treat expects to sell a million dollars worth of computers and services this year.

"I'm having fun," says Treat, who recently stopped wearing tennis shoes, jeans and T-shirts to work. Suits and ties are standard now at Computer Concepts. "I like it. It feels right. It feels good," he adds.

The new look marks a turning point for Treat's Apple Computer dealership. In April, he joined Connecting Point of America, a computer franchise organization serving more than 400 computer dealerships across the country.

"We wanted to be able to compete statewide with the big, high-volume, Anchorage-based dealers in pricing and service, and the only way to do that was to link up with a huge national company," he says. Now we can offer our customers not only competitive prices, but increased technical support and faster delivery."

The national connection has already helped Treat snatch plums from Anchorage's Apple market. In October, he closed a $100,000 deal with the Anchorage Dally News for 32 Macintosh computers.

Through the Connecting Point, Treat also was able to expand his product line to include IBM-compatible NEC hardware. According to Treat, a large percentage of the computer market is using IBM systems. The new store features a greater variety of hardware and less software.

We were competing with catalogs," Treat says of his software sales. The large displays of computer games are gone from Computer Concepts, which now offers only basic business software.

Sales to businesses and schools represent 90 percent of the Soldotna store's present activity. heat explains that although home computer sales and business sales were about even five years ago, home computer sales are dropping off nationwide.

"It used to be that you bought a computer just like a television - you picked it out, took it home and plugged it in for entertainment. Not anymore. A dealer has to prove that life will be easier with computers, especially to a business," he says.

In 1984 Treat bought a computer for his cabinet business and became a believer. The first three months I had that computer I never went to bed before two in the morning,' he recalls.

Bookkeeping chores began to take only a fraction of the 10 hours a month he used to spend. With the...