COMPANY History

1976 •           Business Machines Inc. was founded and incorporated in August 1976 by Mike Upchurch as an Olivetti Franchised Dealer for the purpose of selling Olivetti typewriters and calculators to small and medium size accounts in the Raleigh area.  1980’s •           In 1980 Olivetti closed their district office in Raleigh leaving Business Machines, a one-man sales company, without a source of technical service.  The company seized this opprotunity to establish its own service department expanding our provided services.  •           This was the "hay-day" of the electronic typewriter.  The customer base expanded rapidly.  •           Adding Durham and Chapel Hill territories to the current Raleigh market, presented the opportunity to cover the entire Research Triangle area. Serviced areas included all the counties in a one-hour radius of the Raleigh office.

Mike Upchurch President and Founder

•           The company was doing well with the service of typewriters and word processors, but the sales of new products were being hurt by the competition from the low priced personal computers.  A decision had to be made whether the company would move into the copier business or continue in its current path with computers.  In an effort to fulfill the long term goal of providing clients with a totally integrated office, the decision was made to expand the computer business.  Part of this decision included the addition of the Muratec (formerly Murata) line of facsimile machines. 

1990’s
•           bmi’s goal to offer businessesa total integrated office solution went one step further when we started selling Artisoft's LANtastic local area networks. 
•           All of the customer's needs for networking were not being fulfilled by LANtastic. This demand for quality support and upgrades made it evident that the company needed to invest in training and also become an authorized Novell dealer.
•           The Gestetner Corporation was launching the new Nashuatec brand of copiers that was being manufactured by Ricoh.  This new brand was the opportunity the company needed to be able to offer larger copiers. 
•           The Ricoh Corporation purchased the Gestetner Corporation and starting manufacturing Gestetner machines.

2000’s
•           Business Machines experienced major gains in the sale of Gestetner digital integrated systems while losing sales in the systems and fax markets.  The company had narrowed its focus to the sale and support of integrated copier systems. 
•           In October of 2002 a long-term goal was fulfilled.  The company was able to purchase an office building at 3121 Glen Royal Road off Glenwood Avenue near RDU airport.  This location was more in the center of the Research Triangle area, making it easier to focus more attention on the Durham and Chapel Hill markets.
•           Our full-time staff increased to ten in 2005 with the addition
•           Ricoh, our major vendor, merged the Gestetner and Lanier brands giving us the opportunity to sell the Lanier brand.
•           In an effort to offer more affordable document storage software, bmi became authorize to sell and support SmartSearch software from Square 9.  bmi began offering Print Management Services.
•           The most notable event for 2009 was the down turn of the economy.  Thanks to our staff and 33 years of experience bmi was able to weather yet another storm.
•           In 2010 the economy stabilized from the recession that started in 2009.