SMT Corp—

Multimillion Dollar Facility Opens On High Bridge Road

By Kaaren Valenta

A business that began in a homeowner’s garage in Newtown six years ago has emerged as a premier supplier of electronic components and asset recovery worldwide with a multimillion-dollar office and warehouse on High Bridge Road in Botsford.

SMT Corp is owned by two Newtown residents, Tom Sharpe and Frank Harrington, who grew up in Easton and have known each other since elementary school. Their wives, Kirsten Sharpe and Marci Harrington, have known each other since ninth grade. Kirsten is the accounting/financial manager and Marci manages the office operations.

Their business began in 1999 by salvaging and reselling silicone chips from computers. Soon, however, they outgrew their garage space and rented 5,000 square feet in Monroe; within three years they had space in five buildings in three different towns. Their product line has grown from 65 line items to 60,000 line items representing more than 600 manufacturers, with 90 percent of the sales via the Internet.

“The Internet made our business possible,” Tom Sharpe said in a recent interview. “You simply could not afford to advertise to a worldwide audience representing all markets prior to the web, but the Internet changed all that. Sooner or later everything sells; we’ve even started using eBay. Not only do we sell electronic components worldwide, but we look to acquire excess/obsolete components and related peripherals from companies either through a direct buyout or a customized consignment program. Most, but not all, of our products are recent technology.”

Frank Harrington added, “We even sell chips that are 30 years old. There is a lot of old technology out there that needs to be maintained.”

After two years of construction, SMT Corp is now settled into its new state-of-the-art facility on a nine-acre site in Newtown. A 500-foot driveway lined with colorful flowers and plants leads to the 71,640-square-foot building.

SMT Corp emphasizes security. All employees use an electronic fob to open the outer door of the building, and then have to be identified by a bioscan of their fingerprints to open the inner door. There is a video surveillance system inside and out, 30 miles of interior data wiring, and an 80,000-gallon underground water storage tank for firefighting.

There also is an ESD airlock entrance to the workspace where employees and visitors have to place their palm on a device that determines whether their bodies contain any static electricity before the door will open. More than 60,000 square feet of the work areas have special ESD flooring that dissipates any static electricity into the ground.

“Electronic devices are very sensitive to static electricity,” Tom Sharpe explained.

The building was constructed with a highly efficient HVAC (heat, ventilating, and air conditioning) system that ensures the safe storage of the electronic equipment and components in a low humidity environment. There is a special room for “baking” chips if they arrive containing too much moisture. The facility is ISO 9001:2000 certified and environmentally certified through ISO 14001:96, two measures of its commitment to quality operations.

“One of the biggest problems in our industry is counterfeiting from China” Mr Sharpe said. “We check to be sure that everything we handle is genuine.”

SMT (a name that refers to the surface mount technology used in the electronics industry) also buys and sells bulk loads of new equipment such as items that are produced but never used.

“We deal in large quantities of factory-new parts directly to the manufacturers and end users — we do not sell to the public” Mr Sharpe said. “Currently we handle the safe disposal and asset recovery of all used computers, monitors, and related gear from several fortune 500 companies. The nonsalable material will be recycled.

“We are a very ‘green’ company,” he emphasized. “Everything is disposed of properly.”

“A lot of people do what we do but most don’t have facilities like this one nor the inventory,” Frank Harrington said. “We only advertise what we have in stock, not what we say we can get, unlike many other companies. Same-day shipments and in-stock are critical in our business. We warranty everything we sell; anything can be returned and or replaced.”

“Since 2001 the technology industry has been at a low but it is slowly coming back. We are making a profit in this environment because as independent distributors we have no sales territories and can sell worldwide,” he said.

The two owners said their ultraclean industrial business is exactly what Newtown is looking for and that town officials informed them of the possible tax incentives if they located here.

“We were offered significant tax abatements and incentives by other towns. We could have located in Naugatuck for a song compared to our investment here in Newtown,” Mr Sharpe said. “But we live here and wanted our business to be located here. Our tax revenues should go back into the community that we live in. We are providing a service, a profitably run resource with a purpose-built facility that is focused on the purchasing of excess/obsolete components and related peripherals, and the safe storage and resale of these same products.”

SMT has 18 employees but the owners envision, and have planned for, as many as 65 in their new location. Their human resource manager and shipping manager are both Newtown residents.

Originally an electrical contractor, Tom Sharpe was co-owner of a precision thickness gauge company in Stratford until he started SMT. Frank Harrington had been in electronic sales since he was 18, most recently with a major franchised electronics distributor. The Sharpes have four children and the Harringtons have three children.

SMT bought almost all the World War I and World War II recruitment posters that were sold at Fairfield Auction by the Booth Library and had them framed to hang in their facility.

“I would have bought them all but I was fishing and my cell phone lost signal during the bidding,” Tom Sharpe explained.

The Sharpe and Harrington families are involved in the community. When they heard about the arson that destroyed the handicap playground at Treadwell Park several years ago they called the next morning and made a $15,000 donation to rebuild it.

“We want to be good neighbors,” Mr Sharpe said. “Although we were approved by Planning and Zoning with an original $30,000 landscape plan, we later increased it to $300,000 because of the close proximity of our residential neighbors. We did not want the presence of our building to detract from the value of the neighbors’ properties. We bought this property from a lifelong town resident, and gave her a life estate in the house she built with her husband in 1937, which we also maintain.”

The owners had high praise for Newtown Savings Bank, which provided the funding for SMT’s new facility, and the Borghesi Construction Company of Torrington, which built it.

“[Community Development Director] Liz Stocker and [First Selectman] Herb Rosenthal also were great,” Mr Sharpe said. “Dealing with the town building department went smoothly — they were tough at times but always knowledgeable and fair. We owe everyone involved a heartfelt ‘thank you.’”