Different strokes
Given that Dicker is not your average businessman, it's hardly surprising that his company's history is marked by a few quirks in the way it has been operated. Most notably, it was staffed almost entirely by women for years in what is largely a male-dominated industry. In many ways, with so much current talk about helping women back into the workforce after childbirth, Dicker was well ahead of its time in the 1990s.
"Our hiring policy and working structure was quite different to other companies and in my opinion it gave us a significant advantage," he said.
"Our sales staff were all converted housewives with young kids that wanted to get back into work but only during school hours.
"From our point of view that was fine because we instituted an hourly payment rate. There was no holiday pay or sick pay and if anybody didn't want to come in then it didn't bother us and it didn't bother them - they were all extremely well paid, especially with Compaq in the 1990s because there were so many bonus payments that went direct to the employees."
A tightening of government regulations around casual employment has since made that system unworkable, but Dicker still has an unusually high percentage of women among its 40 employees, and many have been with the company for a long time.
"When you've been in a job for a long time you get pretty good at it," he said. "That's one of the advantages of having a stable environment because business is a competition and you have to be better than your competitors. If you're not, then you're not going to do well."
Favourite memories
Dicker still gets excited when talking about early machines that sounded like jet engines when you powered them up, or the difficulty of servicing machines when suppliers had filed part numbers off because they were paranoid about customers cloning them.
"It was exciting to be on the edge of something that was going to be very big, and that doesn't happen very often. We were right at the front of it," he said. Winning a first major supplier contract is still perhaps his proudest moment, but surviving all the twists and turns of a maturing industry during the past three decades is also listed among his major achievements.
"I can still remember getting the letter from Lore Harp confirming that Vector had decided to make us their exclusive Australian distributor. That was a real breakthrough for us and we achieved it purely out of performing better than the other guys," he said.
"Today there could be anything in those boxes but back then we used to unpack every single machine and run it for a couple of days to weed out any faults. If we sold a machine interstate then we'd fly out to the customer and install it for nothing.
"Staying in the business as long as we have, and being profitable all that time while moving into a position of reasonable strength, also makes me pretty proud."
