Calgary’s CoolIT Systems earns international acclaim at electronic show

Brydon Gierl should have been taking a break. Everyone else was. After all, it was the holidays and spending them in a Calgary sheet metal workshop wasn’t a popular choice amongst Gierl’s co-workers.

Geoff Lyon surveys the inner working of his company’s computer cooling system, which garnered recognition at Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January.

Photo: Stephen Kent/Calgary Journal

Scott, who Gierl says was “a bit of a gamer,” came to him with the idea of cooling computers in order to improve processing capability. Heat, after all, limits what a computer’s processors can actually achieve. Of course, Gierl did not know this at the time. In fact, he admits that he knew little about computers.

Still, curiosity and the potential for extra cash sparked Gierl’s interest, so he and his friend set out to build a prototype that would supplant existing computer cooling technology.

Ten years after curiosity got the better of him, Gierl is now vice-president of manufacturing for Calgary-based CoolIT Systems, the company that began amidst the presses, cutters and grinders of the sheet metal workshop he once worked at.

It is the same company that received four different Innovations Awards at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas — the most recognized tradeshow of its kind.

Some 2,700 exhibitors and innovators from around the world converged on Las Vegas to show off their latest products in consumer technology. Among them, CoolIT Systems was named an honouree in the categories of computer peripherals and computer accessories.

The company and its products have come a long way from the prototype that Gierl and Scott pieced together. The past decade has held a number of turning points for the company.

After three weeks of work in the sheet metal workshop, Gierl and Scott had their product built. “We popped out of the darkness with something that was actually working on a computer,” Gierl says. “A month later it wrecked the computer because of condensation issues. That’s when we started to realize that this is trickier than it looks.”

The prototype that Gierl and Scott were working on used thermoelectric technology to cool a computer’s central processing unit and graphics processing unit— the same technology that the company’s current products are based on.

Rather than having a fan blow cool air at these processing components when they begin to overheat, a liquid coolant is pumped through the system, which comes in direct contact with the central and/or graphics processing units.

Despite their product’s initial defects and condensation problems, Gierl and Scott were able to pique the interest of one of Gierl’s neighbours, Jason Myers, over beers one evening in early 2000. Myers, a chartered accountant, had connections in Calgary’s business community and knew the importance of protecting intellectual property.

Scrounging up money from family, friends, and business contacts, the three men had a patent search conducted for their liquid cooling technology in 2001. Realizing they had a unique product on their hands, the men acted quickly to secure their idea with a patent and incorporate under the name CoolIT Systems.

The first few years under the CoolIT identity saw minimal growth for the company. Despite having intellectual property protection and a formal company name, Myers, Scott and Gierl lacked direction. “The feeling was that we were on a launching pad but didn’t know where to leap,” Gierl says.

In June 2005, Gierl was out mowing his lawn when his phone rang. It was Myers. Gierl recounts the excitement in Myers’ voice and says his friend’s first words were “I just met the guy; he’s done everything we need to do.”

The man Myers was referring to was Geoff Lyon. One of CoolIT’s investors had suggested that Myers sit down with Lyon in order to help gain direction from someone who had experience with a start-up technology company. Lyon was on the management team of Intrigue Technologies Inc., creators of Harmony Remotes, which had been acquired by technology giant Logitech less than a year prior.

Coming off his experience at Intrigue and simply “looking for something to do,” Lyon sat down for lunch with Myers on the recommendation of their mutual acquaintance.

“We popped out of the darkness with something that was actually working...”

—Brydon Gierl,
Owner, CoolIT Systems

Drawing on his background in aerospace engineering and after some quick research, Lyon felt Myers and his partners were on to something. “I knew the trend was for more transistors (in computers), more power, and a need for allowing for that,” Lyon says.

The result of the meeting between Myers and Lyon was dramatic. The next day, Lyon officially became CEO of CoolIT Systems giving the company the direction that the three founders sought.

This decision is one that Gierl says he relishes to this day. He also says that the company’s success can be attributed to a number of the qualities Lyon brought to CoolIT.

“It’s his vision and concept of what the market wants and how to exceed consumer expectations in the marketplace; the knowledge of user interface thanks to what he did with Harmony Remotes,” Gierl says.

Lyon says that the establishment of manufacturing processes, an engineering team, quality control measures, and business partnerships, are among the steps taken since his arrival that have allowed the company to develop into what it is today.

“We have a customer list that is the envy of the industry,” Lyon says. Apple, Dell, and Maingear are all customers of CoolIT, while the company also holds partnerships with processor titans Intel and AMD.

Also indicative of how far the company has come, are the 28 registered patents for its various products, and a customer base that reaches beyond North America into Europe and Asia.

Kevin Dahl, manager of business networking and cluster development at Calgary Technologies Inc., has followed CoolIT’s development over the past few years. Dahl says that the way the company has managed to evolve from such a rudimentary state in its beginnings, makes CoolIT a success story within Calgary’s technology industry.

“They were not afraid to think big,” Dahl says. “They said, ‘why can’t we get these big manufacturers to use our products?’ And they have.”

The honours given to CoolIT at the Consumer Electronics Show in January were for its brand new line of cooling products, which went onto the market immediately following the event. And while the awards the company received were cause for excitement, Lyon is equally excited by the amount of business they have seen since the debut.

“It’s been a new kind of hectic around here,” Lyon says. “It’s stretching the requirements of our manufacturing.”

Despite the frenzy, Lyon says that the company intends on having even better products to showcase once the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show comes around.

Today, Brydon Gierl is the only remaining co-founder still playing a role in the company’s day-to-day operations. For Gierl, it is the same curiosity and passion for hands-on work that brought him to a metal workshop over the holidays in 1999, that drives his work at CoolIT today.

“I still don’t like computers all that much, but just the excitement of developing things, there is still as much hands on as I possibly could want. That’s what keeps me going,” he said.

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