Anthony Cardenas still gets excited about climbing the charts. But these days it’s ascending business lists not the Billboard charts that rocks the world of the ex-bassist for heavy metal band Great White.

And DiskFaktory, the Irvine-based company of which Cardenas is president, has recently ascended one of the grand peaks of corporate cataloguing: the Inc. 500. Every year the business magazine Inc. puts out its list of the 500 fastest-growing private companies in America, and checking in at No. 485 in the 2005 group is DiskFaktory, which has evolved a quicker, more streamlined process to reproduce CDs and DVDs.

“I was so happy about making the Inc. 500 list,”says Cardenas, who 15 years ago was blazing away as bassist “Tony Montana”his moniker with Great White contributing his guitar riffs on such monster
hits as “Once Bitten, Twice Shy”and “House of Broken Love.”

How successful?

Well, the numbers tell the story: From 2002 when DiskFaktory was launched through 2004, the
company’s rate of growth was 297%; it has served more than 40,000 customers and revenue in 2004
was $3.7 million.

“We’re getting so many CD orders right now, it’s just crazy,”Cardenas says. “We can hardly keep up. And the DVD orders are really picking up, too.”

DiskFaktory also reproduces data disks; and it specializes in the Digital Business Card CD, which is the same size as a paper business card and has the same basic information on the exterior but also contains a company’s CD presentation and can be popped into a computer. Cardenas, the erstwhile hard rocker who is now a self-described computer “geek to the nth degree,”hands one out himself when a visitor asks for his business card.



Transforming an industry

DiskFaktory’s copying innovations are helping transform the business of mass-producing discs, putting a whole new spin on the process by bringing duplication into the digital age.
Traditionally, making copies of
discs involved inks, chemicals and customized tooling for each job.
That has meant high set-up costs passed on to the client and a
month delay before the order was ready, says DiskFaktory CEO Ben Abadi.
But the Irvine company uses an all-digital process that involves no tooling and allows customers to get their discs back in as little as 24 hours. The old way was called “replication;”the new way is called “duplication,”Abadi notes.

DiskFaktory’s approach also enables customers who range from small, independent bands to big corporations to place their orders online. This, too, translates into simplicity and accessibility, cutting out steps that have typically bogged down the copying process. Ordering through the company’s website (www.diskfaktory.com) and getting to customize the orders to fit your business’s needs takes minutes and can be done at any time of the day or night.
The company’s target customers are aspiring musicians and filmmakers people who need to have copies of their work made to distribute, whether to be screened or played or sold. Particularly for independent bands trying to make it in the music business which is where Cardenas’s experience as a musician is so valuable DiskFaktory has become a great option, because it cuts way down on the cost of reproducing a debut CD.

“Traditionally, start-up musicians couldn’t reproduce a record without paying at least $1,500 to $2,000,” Abadi says. “Now, you can come to our website and pay $200 and get a full-quality package.
“We’re servicing the other 99% of the people in the music business who aren’t signed to record labels.”

With the old technology, bands had to order thousands of CDs at a time to justify the setup costs. Making such a large investment when a record might not sell was a financial risk. Now, with DiskFakory’s digital process, artists can order a few hundred discs for a few hundred dollars and then, if the record sells, come back and order another batch, and keep going along like that.
The system has worked well for East Coast band Beyond Fallen. The metal band went through
DiskFaktory when it ordered copies of its full-length CD, “Lost in the Shadows,”this past November.
“You can do a small order and you do the order in two minutes it’s great,’’says Joe Karavis, founder of the five-member band, which plays venues in New York and Pennsylvania.
Karavis, a graphic designer, says he was also able to design the artwork for the album cover on the DiskFaktory website.