First Equipment Company (FEC), founded on October 14, 1975, was an extension of the First Mortgage Corporation of Oklahoma City. FEC leased computer equipment to large corporations and then sold the equipment and lease to investors as tax shelters. FEC arranged the financing for the investors, and then administered the leases by billing the lessee, collecting the rent, and selling the equipment as it came off lease. FEC distributed these funds among the investors and collected a portion of the equipment’s residual value as compensation for these services.
Herbert (Pete) Arnold, III purchased controlling interest in First Equipment Company in 1977, and moved the corporate office to Dallas. We continued to manage the tax shelter packages until the tax laws changed making tax shelters unattractive to small investors. FEC’s focus shifted to developing its own portfolio of equipment leases.
The late eighties were a busy time at First Equipment Company. In 1986, we purchased the entire equipment portfolio of two competitor leasing firms, TCS Leasing and QualiLease, Ltd. By 1988, terminals and small printers accounted for a large percentage of our inventory. To better control expenses we opened our own refurb center - First Equipment Company Technical Center (FECTC). Originally planned as a warehouse to store the older equipment, FECTC quickly developed the skills needed to audit, test, and repair many machines. At the end of 1988, FEC had twelve full time employees.
In 1990, we began to search for a combination office and warehouse space large enough to house the growing company: FEC and FECTC. We found suitable space in Addison, TX and formed a new company, First Equipment Company Properties, Ltd., to purchase and manage the building. FEC moved into temporary space on March 4, 1991, and spent the rest of the year building our new office/warehouse suite. Construction proved to be only a minor distraction as our monthly lease billing exceeded $1,000,000 for the first time in November of 1991.
The CEO Institute and the Edwin L. Cox School of Business, at SMU, named FEC one of the top 100 fastest growing companies in the Dallas Metroplex for 1992, and again in 1993. FEC’s brokerage sales transactions increased, and the sales department required additional capital to fund new business. FEC created another company, First Equipment Company Remarketing Group, Inc. (RGI), to provide the additional funding for the sales department. Gross annual revenues increased from $10.5 million at the end of 1990 to over $21 million at the end of 1993.
Over the years the computer industry has changed due to market conditions and technological breakthroughs, and FEC has changed to continually meet our customers’ needs. In 1994, FEC began a long-range project to increase FECTC’s repair and technical services capabilities that has grown our technical services area a strong competitive advantage for our customers. We have initiated partner arrangements with many hardware suppliers, including becoming authorized resellers for Hewlett Packard, Toshiba, IBM’s PC division and others. These relationships allow us to purchase equipment at highly competitive prices and pass those savings to our customers through attractive sale and lease pricing.
Our steady growth continued over the remainder of the nineties and we brought in the new millennium with record monthly lease billing and great customer relationships.
In late 2004, Susan M. Arnold was appointed President of First Equipment Company. FEC was certified as an official Women’s Business Enterprise through the Women’s Business Council Southwest, which is part of the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council, in 2005. We are enjoying the ability to offer our customers the additional opportunity to meet their diversity requirements while having the best equipment services around!
