entrepreneurial spirit
Story by Susan O'Connor, Photo by Dero Sanford

Mark Duckworth’s entrepreneurial spirit ignited at the age of 23 when he returned to his hometown of Piggott with an idea for a business and a sales-driven personality. Success has followed him all along the way.

Duckworth was attending the University of Missouri in St. Louis and working for a company that refurbished and sold telecom systems, a relatively new market at the time.

“The company I worked for had some challenges so I decided to move home and try it,” he said. “I had nothing to lose and thought I could start a similar business. The market was brand new and I knew just enough to be dangerous.”
His childhood on the family farm provided excellent preparation for the business world, he noted.

“I watched my father and grandfather run that business,” Duckworth said. “I learned work ethic and core values. I can never describe in a million words how valuable that was in running my business today.”

Started as Matrix Telecom in 1991, the company — now Optus, Inc. — quickly outgrew the small town of Piggott. In the spring of 1996, Duckworth built a 25,000-square-foot headquarters in Jonesboro. Within 18 months, it was necessary to double the size of the building.

The core of Optus has always been the national distribution of new and refurbished business communication parts, systems and services both to a reseller and a major accounts channel. Since moving to Jonesboro, Optus has landed several major national accounts, such as Saks Fifth Avenue, Bed Bath and Beyond, Enterprise-Rent-A-Car and O’Reilly Auto Parts. Optus is the largest NEC (telecom equipment) distributor in the country with more than 100 dealers.

The company moved into local markets around the year 2000, opening or buying retail field offices in Jonesboro, Memphis, Little Rock, Texarkana, Dallas and Houston and for the last decade, Optus has provided clients in these markets with local support.

Last year, even in a climate of economic downturn, Optus grew revenues and profits of both divisions. Recently, Duckworth sold the arm of the corporation that was comprised of the regional field offices located throughout Arkansas and Texas. The Northeast Arkansas market was bought by Ritter Communications. Optus will continue to support Ritter as a wholesale distributor for the NEC systems needed to service their clients.

“We haven’t reinvented ourselves; we have repositioned ourselves to do what we do best. We want to be the best distribution company in the lines we serve. We want to grow this company aggressively. Our core business comprised about 75 percent of our total revenue before the sale of our field offices.
“It really was a strategic business decision for us. It was also a win for our new partners. They are doing what they do best, growing where they have expertise. It really could not have worked out better. The transition has gone extremely well. We now have a chance to grow our business even more than we ever thought possible.”

When you started your company at the young age of 23, what was your family’s reaction? Maybe a little skeptical, but very supportive. One of my grandfather’s favorite stories when he was alive was when I rolled the U-Haul truck into Piggott. It held all my meager belongings and he met me at my new office that day to help me unload it. I am sure he kept looking to see if there was something else in there. I thought it was full, but he was probably wondering how I was going to survive with just a desk, computer and other basic essentials. As my business grew over the years he would tell me — and everyone else — the story of this day and how he had to pinch himself to believe how successful my business had become and how much we had grown so quickly.

You said how important your membership in the Young Presidents Organization has been to your business. How did you find out about the organization and how has what you’ve learned changed the way you do business? Murray Benton, who is a good friend of mine and president of Mid-South Sales, was a member and introduced me to YPO in 2002. YPO has helped me manage my business at a higher level. It has encouraged me to seek more feedback and advice for our most important decisions. I have been exposed to great educational opportunities and networking, both professionally and personally. It gave me the insight to create our advisory board and several other initiatives critical to our success and growth.

Were do you see yourself and your business in 10 years? Being a great husband and father is my first priority. Corbin, my son, will be a teenager by then. It’s important to me to continue teaching him the same core values I was taught as a child. I still plan to be very involved in our business, but as we continue to grow I want to function at a more strategic level. We have a great management team, and I have already started to evolve my role as the CEO and rely more heavily on them for the day-to-day functions. We plan to double the size of our business inside of five years, and I know we can do that if we set our minds to it, so in 10 years, the sky is the limit. We want to be one of the best distribution companies for communications technologies and services in the U.S. I don’t think the technology we sell in 10 years will be something we even recognize today since everything is changing so fast.