Ted & Brenda Kieper
I began my business career in in 1967 when I rented an old service station on
South 22nd and Greenfield Avenue in Milwaukee to have a place to work on
my racing motorcycles. I named it Competition Cycle Center. To support my expensive racing habit I began repairing
motorcycles for the public. I was traveling to races all over the mid-west and
it was getting hard to make ends meet. I had just left my two year (1965 -
1967)position
at Harley-Davidson Motor Company
so I needed to earn some money. Through
the fall of 1967 and winter of 1968 I drove a taxi cab at night 7 nights a week. I
operated the motorcycle shop 6 days a week. In
March of 1968 I placed a radio ad on WRIT radio in Milwaukee for motorcycle
repair and tune-ups and became the 1st Milwaukee area motorcycle
business to advertise on the radio. It brought me instant credibility and
business and by fall I was looking for a larger building which I found on South 27th
and National. By 1972 I had to build an addition on to the building to house
my 21 employees.
In the fall of 1982 we purchased a Texas Instruments Home Computer for
our children for Christmas and I was curious about it so I decided that
I needed to set it up and test it so the kids wouldn’t be disappointed if it
didn’t work. After about a week of sitting up late
playing with the computer connected to our TV in our bedroom after the kids were
in bed, I decided to take it to the shop and play with
it there. About two weeks later I began selling computer products at my
motorcycle store under the name of Competition Computer. At first I specialized in printer sales selling over a hundred
a month after a short time.
In spring 1985 I went to a service school in Boston for Leading Edge
computers to learn how to repair printers and computers. By fall 1985 I began assembling my own PCs. Most
people thought I was crazy. No one would consider buying a computer without IBM’s
name on it and I was wasting my time. I did it anyway. The rest is history.
There are now thousands of computers in
existence we have built.
In 1990 I sold the motorcycle business. In
2005 I started another motorcycle business called
KeeperCycle.com
As of June 1, 2000 the company name has been changed to Computer Doctor
Wis
LLC.
Ted Kieper owner
