The Miami-based tech manufacturer started in 1996 with $10,000 in borrowed capital and a dream that someday it could reach the amazing goal of selling 100 computers a month.
That goal was met and surpassed.
This year, the firm is set to complete more than $200 million in sales by selling 6,000 computers a month.
Alienware, which has satellite facilities in Ireland and Costa Rica, is in a meteoric rise to become a public company within the next 24 months, according to its founders.
'We were profitable from the third year,' Alienware CEO and co-founder Nelson Gonzalez said. He was the go-to geek of his video game group who could always modify the game hardware for more speed and power.
'Their growth has been phenomenal,' said Holly Wiedman, executive VP for economic development of the Beacon Council.
The Beacon Council started working with Alienware about six years ago, she said, adding that the company 'has grown much faster and larger than any of us thought it could just five years ago.
' When Alienware was founded and named, the Air Force's Area 51 was in the counter-culture news and tales of aliens at Roswell were being retold.
The firm's name still evokes that era and matches its computer's space creature-like looks.
The look and name were meant to appeal to computer game players, but the novelty and humor resonated as well with a wide range of computer buyers in a generally humorless industry.
Alienware has survived and thrived in the face of cheap Asian imports, clones and knock-offs of knock-offs. The success wasn't due to cheaper prices, but rather selecting a high-performance niche and never looking back. It was all based on something its founders had a passion for: computer games.
Co-founder, President and COO Alex Aguila is fond of telling the story that his mother told him he'd never amount to anything if he kept playing video games.
But mother doesn't always know best. Aguila and Gonzalez turned their addictive hobby into a robust business that has also expanded to other high-performance users.
It has now become a maker of choice for high-performance desktop, notebook, media center, server and professional systems. And it's still a top choice for gamers.
'We tapped into the video editing market in the second year and the high-performance design graphics field in the third year, as our reputation spread from the gamers,' Gonzalez said.
And Alienware's popularity kept growing.
'The editor of PC Gamer Magazine loved the machine so much after testing it that he didn't want to give it back,' Gonzalez and Aguila laughed in unison.
The computers quickly won rave reviews, plus numerous industry awards for performance, speed and reliability.
Coming soon is the Alienware home, an interactive entertainment, control and computer system targeted for home use and marketed through custom installers.
'Alienware has been very successful selling exclusively over the phone and over the Internet,' said Mark Vena, newly appointed VP of marketing. 'The average computer user is probably on his sixth or seventh computer, and has become very sophisticated in both his requirements and in ordering.'
About 80 percent of the orders are via the Internet, with the balance by phone.
Alienware is also experimenting with other forms of marketing. It has opened its first retail kiosk at the Dadeland Mall, which has 22 million shoppers annually. A decision will be made shortly on whether to roll out a regional or national kiosk program, the company said.
More employees, now totaling about 700 worldwide, have accompanied Alienware's rapid growth.
It has 375 staff in its Miami facility handling the supply chain, manufacturing, accounting and marketing; 275 in Costa Rica handling billing and finance; and 75 in Athlone, Ireland, a mini version of the Miami facility that sells to western Europe.
There is also a joint-venture selling in Australia/New Zealand that started last May and is already selling more than 400 computers a month.
Alienware fit in with the Beacon Council's "One Community, One Goal" plan to make Miami a leader in information technology and a cornerstone of the Internet Coast.
'There are about a dozen international companies that are synonymous with Miami,' Wiedman said. 'They are the ones that have global recognition like Ryder, Burger King and Carnival Cruise Lines - and Alienware has joined that elite group.'
But it is the company's newest goal of $1 billion in annual sales that has made even Aguila's mother a true believer.
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