Pasco tech firm continues to grow

Christopher Torrioni, president and co-founder of Sensible Micro Corporation, took a seat at the end of his conference table, an unusually bulky piece of furniture for the modestly sized room.

"You notice anything unusual about the table?" he asked. "Look underneath."

A leather pocket hung from under one corner. It's a converted pool table. When he and his father, Ferdinand Torrioni, better known to just about everyone as Fred, started the Odessa-based company nearly six years ago, a family friend built a top to go over it.

It's the kind of quirky office oddity you can enjoy when you own your own company, and a nice icebreaker for a business that doesn't sound too exciting at first.

"We're a strategic sourcing and stocking distributor for board-level electronic components," Torrioni said, adding that when he tells people that "they get a look on their faces like they wish they hadn't asked."

The topic gets considerably more exciting when the company's phenomenal growth is considered. In 2009, Sensible Micro Corp. made Inc. magazine's list of the 500 fastest-growing privately owned companies in America.

"In 2009 we were actually flat," Torrioni said. "But in 2010, we shot up to 90 percent again."

With that noted exception in 2009, Sensible Micro has nearly doubled its sales each year. The company supplies electronics manufacturers with microchips and other components, a challenging task in an industry as varied, competitive and ever-changing as electronics.

Consumers often complain that technology develops so fast that whenever they buy the latest computer or other gadget, it's obsolete in six months. The rate of attrition is even faster for the parts inside those devices, Torrioni said. What their company does keep manufacturers supplied with the parts their production schedules demand.

"Say a phone manufacturer wants to make 10,000 units of a certain model of phone, but the design calls for a chip that's become obsolete," Torrioni said. "So now, the whole production line has come to a standstill. They can't generate revenue any longer, because of this one stupid part."

Or maybe the part isn't obsolete, but that model phone is so hot right now the manufacturer is having a hard time getting enough of that chip to keep up with demand.

That's when they come to a company like Sensible Micro, which either has the part or knows where to look for it from a worldwide list of sources, including other customers. Often a component that has become one company's excess junk is exactly what another company needs.

One of the services that Sensible Micro has built itself on is cross-referencing, finding the best substitute when a component isn't available. The goal is to find a part that would require the least amount of design modification to the product being built. Sometimes there's a "drop-in," an exact match.

Other times it just can't be done, like when a client calls hoping to replace parts that are 20 years old. "We see that a lot in the aerospace market," Torrioni said.

Along with handling critical shortages, another key to Sensible Micro's success is quality assurance. Testing and inspecting parts is one of the most important parts of the business.

"There's a huge issue with counterfeit components," Torrioni said. They'll sand off the tops of chips and then doctor them to look new."

Sensible Micro performs microscopic inspections, and sends parts out for internal inspection and testing. Within the next year, they hope to do it all in-house when they move to a new 20,000 square-foot facility in Oldsmar, as part of a move to grow even faster.

"The industry that we play in is almost a trillion-dollar industry," Torrioni said, "so $8 million in sales is significant to us, but in the grand scheme of things, it's dust. These big manufacturers are spending major amounts of money."

The company recently launched a new website, www.sensiblemicro.com , to make it quicker and easier for those companies to do some of that spending with them. The site features current inventories, allows buyers to get quotes within minutes and features a cross-referencing tool for those hard-to-fill needs.

Sensible Micro has 24 employees, a figure that continues to grow right along with the sales figures. When the company moves into the new facility, Torrioni is hoping to set up an employees' game room, and take the pool table out of retirement.

Another of the company's strongest assets has been the Torrionis' approach of taking their business personally.

"We're a family-owned company; our reputation is very important to us," Torrioni said. "The future's pretty bright for us, I hope."