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If things had happened any other way, Wallace Santos would be spending his days working a regular 9-to-5 before coming home to work on his true passion: building high performance computers.

But, as luck would have it, Santos was able to take his passion and build a successful business. And he did it at an age when he was too young to do anything else.

“By the time I was 18, I’d finished my technical school and was ready to find a job, but no one would hire me because I was too young,” he said. “So, I started a networking consulting business in September of 2002 and, by December, I noticed people were really looking for systems.”

And that’s not all.

“Friends and family were asking me to build them gaming systems, and that was what I loved doing, so I completely pivoted my business model,” he said.

Over that holiday season, Santos changed the name of his original business to Maingear and began to focus on the manufacturing of boutique PCs.

Headquartered in Kenilworth, the company now builds custom computers for anyone that needs particularly high performance machines for personal and business needs.

“We build these really powerful PCs that can be used as a workstation or anything else,” he said. “If you’re a photographer and want to do photo or video editing, our gaming PCs do it better than your typical Dell or HP.

“Because our systems are so powerful, they’re also used for people who are running architectural firms or doing high frequency trading in New York City,” he said. “They realize that our systems are very powerful and that it’s a perfect fit.”

The ability to customize machines for performance has led the company to partnerships with larger computer manufacturers such as Hewlett-Packard.

In August, Maingear announced it had been working with the large manufacturer to produce HP’s new Omen-X line of gaming computers.

“HP called us in the beginning of the year and said they wanted to develop a product with us and, about three months ago, we announced our product together,” Santos said. “HP has three different versions of the product, and the good and the better version is manufactured by HP through their assembly line.

“The best version of that product is manufactured here in our facility in New Jersey.”

And while the company’s high-performing computers can serve a range of functions, it is really the videogame market that is the root of the company’s business.

It’s a market that Maingear feels is only going to grow, according to Technical Director Ron Reed.

“PC gaming has been a niche for 20 years, but it was always a really focused niche,” he said. “With things like virtual reality, it’s really started to branch out and things like e-sports, for example, held a tournament this year where they gave out $24 million in winnings.”

E-sports involves gaming competitions between professional gamers. The largest events are often held at sporting arenas, with tens of thousands of gaming enthusiasts cheering on the competitors.

“People watch people play video games and they root for their teams,” Santos said, “and that sells out the Staples Arena in 10 minutes.”

The market has so much potency, even Coca-Cola is getting involved. It chose Maingear as a partner and had the company design a computer customized with the Coke logo and other features.

In fact, Maingear’s Coca-Cola model features many of salient traits that cause its products to stand out from its competition: a custom paint job made from car paint (complete with logo and decal work), painstakingly organized interior wiring and a unique liquid cooling system that more efficiently cools the computer’s components.

“We just closed a really big partnership with Coke and they have this whole new division just dedicated to e-sports,” he said. “(The computer) is actually cooled with a liquid that’s designed to look like Coke.”

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