AmeriQuest to Move Headquarters to Florida, Lay Off More Than 60

SANTA ANA — AmeriQuest Technologies Inc., a computer products developer and distributor, said Monday it will move its corporate headquarters to Florida and lay off more than 60 workers as it struggles to regain profitability.

The company’s CMS Enhancements subsidiary, which makes computer disk drives, will remain in Anaheim and will not be affected by the changes.

The Santa Ana-based company disclosed its plans while reporting financial results for its third fiscal quarter. The company reported a loss of $8.47 million, or 14 cents per share, compared to a loss of $58.1 million, or $2.85 per share, in the comparable period a year earlier.

Sales in the third quarter were $111 million, almost exactly the same as in the third quarter of fiscal 1995.

Steve DeWindt, chief executive of AmeriQuest, said the company’s move and layoffs are part of an effort to cut costs and correct a geographic alignment that made little sense after a series of East Coast acquisitions in recent years.

“The bulk of our salespeople are already on the East Coast, and three-fourths of them are in the Miami area,” DeWindt said. He also said that 80% of the company’s customers are east of the Mississippi River.

AmeriQuest will offer jobs in Florida to about 12 of the company’s 75 employees at its Santa Ana headquarters, DeWindt said. The move, possibly to existing company facilities in Miami, is scheduled to be completed by Oct. 7.

AmeriQuest has undergone numerous changes in recent years. Formerly known as CMS Enhancements, the company changed its name to AmeriQuest in 1994, and CMS became the name of its disk drive subsidiary. The name change reflected a plan to change from a manufacturing company into a distributor of computer products.

Last year, a controlling interest in AmeriQuest was acquired by Computer 2000, a $3.5-billion-a-year German electronics distributor seeking an entry into the U.S. market. DeWindt, formerly an executive at Computer 2000, was moved to AmeriQuest as part of that deal.

He said he has focused on trimming costs at the company and trying to grow in a distribution industry dominated by giants such as Ingram Micro of Santa Ana.

For its nine-month period, AmeriQuest reported a loss of $22.4 million on sales of $321 million, compared to a year-earlier loss of $66.5 million on sales of $367 million.

DeWindt said that while the company expects continuing losses, the red ink should subside in the next year. “AmeriQuest has taken the difficult steps needed to help us on the road toward profitability,” he said.

The company is not planning to sell its CMS Enhancements subsidiary, DeWindt said. “Its contribution to our business is very nice, and so that has not been high on our agenda.”