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Learn about BFG Tech from the Executive Vice President of Marketing Scott Herkelman in this Q&A article.
So what can you tell us about you and your position at BFG?
I am the Executive Vice President of Marketing at BFG Tech. I clean up all of the messes that John Malley makes. Believe me it keeps me busy, he’s a messy guy. Just kidding. Seriously though, I’m one of three partners running the company along with Shane Vance who is EVP of Sales and Ric Lewis who is EVP of Operations. We really feel we are different from other graphics card manufacturers because we regularly solicit feedback from the gaming and PC enthusiast community about what works and doesn’t work with our products and services. The cool thing is that we really listen and will implement the better ideas so our products and packaging reflect the people that use them.
Will BFG remain an NVDIA-only company or will they expand to other video card brands?
Absolutely BFG will remain an NVIDIA-only company. I personally believe, as an executive at BFG and also as a gamer and PC enthusiast that NVIDIA’s hardware and software leads the industry. NVIDIA’s engineering and software development teams are the best that I’ve ever worked with. We have a long-standing, excellent relationship with key employees at NVIDIA and this relationship continues to serve us extremely well.
Any plans for motherboards?
We are continuously looking for ways to expand our product offerings, and motherboards certainly fit into the type of products that would appeal to our target markets. When and if we can find a viable market solution for motherboards we will pursue that path.
So your catch phrase is “By Gamers, for Gamers” it’s a nice sentiment and marketing tag, but how did it come about, are you all truly gamers?
Well, we are competing in CAL right now with a BFG Tech team, and we will also be competing at the Summer CPL event. As far as I know that’s a first for a graphics card company and should go a long way to demonstrate how serious we are about gaming and being a part of the community to which we target.
How far does your marketing go globally, what countries do you help with sponsorship of LAN’s, conferences, LAN clubs etc?
As a relatively young company we’ve focused our attention on the U.S. market, however, we have sponsored Canadian LAN events and since we are planning to expand into the U.K. and Latin America over the next few months, we will be expanding our marketing efforts accordingly.
Does ‘BFG’ in terms of your company stand for what we think it stands for?
Uhh… probably, but don’t tell our investors, they think it stands for “Best Freaking Graphics”.
Is BFG ever going to develop “BFG – branded” software tools for their products? IE a BFG Over clocking Utility, BFG game tweaks app, etc.
NVIDIA is currently developing a lot of these software applications and tools. One of the reasons why our graphic cards are as stable as they are is because we don’t modify the drivers or software that interacts with NVIDIA’s specifications. For now we are going to continue focusing on hardware improvements and leave the software to the experts at NVIDIA.
I know you contract out your boards to be made, is there any plans for you to do them yourselves at some point in the future?
Realize that BFG works extremely closely with our board manufacturers to make sure that they are using the best components and that they are customizing the boards to our specifications. So, one way to look at it is that we ARE making our own boards. We’re just using experts to assemble them without having to invest in all of the machinery to do so.
You have your Boom Slang mouse, any other products in the pipeline you can tell us about?
We sell accessory products today, which include GPU fans, Memory sinks, Blue LED Case fans, VIVO cables, DVI to VGA Cables, mouse pads and Teflon slick pads. The GPU fans and memory sinks are being sold by CompUSA today and will fit most value graphic cards. In the future you’ll see more gaming and PC enthusiast type products from BFG, just can’t talk about them now.
Does BFG have any machine makers using your graphics cards? If not is that something you will be aiming for in the future?
If you mean system builders, Falcon-NW and Alienware are two of the largest that have chosen BFG products to power their systems. In fact, Falcon-NW’s award-winning FragBox is exclusively powered by BFG’s GeForce 5950 Ultra. There are also many other smaller system integrators that build their systems with BFG graphic cards.
