OUR MOTTO:
"IF IT'S CRAP, WE'LL BE THE FIRST TO TELL YOU!
eZone, Inc., is the Home of Refurb Madness. We are in Rockford, Illinois.

Is there something you were looking for that's really obscure or downright weird? How about a 100 piece Mac Classic network or the world's slowest web server? If you have a trade, barter or just in need of abuse (or a good cry), email bob@refurbmadness.com

Goodnight Ladies...

Once upon a time...there was a company called Digitek. It was a dream to sell Macintosh stuff on the internet and was started when a lot of the companies that are the biggies in sales sites were started such as buy.com, outpost.com, smalldog.com, Other World, our friends to the east, went from mail order to internet then. Digitek was among them. It did about $2 million in sales in 1998.

Like the house built upon the shifting sands, the financials weren't what they were supposed to be. The supposed financier, Cliff Sugerman (AKA: Cliff Sugarman, Clifford Alan Sugerman, CAS), turned out to be a white trash career conman bilking the company out of a lot of money instead of being a Texas millionaire venture capitalist investing a million dollars. He has spent time in federal prison in Wisconsin and Minnesota and is still on probation until 2010 because of that little trick. I understand he's gone to California. If you need info about the terms of his probation, call the U.S. District Attorney's Office here in Rockford, IL.

Refurb Madness was created after those tragic days at Digitek as a web site with good prices, but more importantly, a Mac Lovrrrrr Attitude and tons of Macintosh legacy info. We loved our jobs. We showed up everyday. We made no money. We lived on the love of the Macintosh and our customers. Apple never authorized us, Deal Mac banned us in 2001 because we could not afford to pay $1000.00 a month to advertise, and we had four of the absolute lousiest landlords on the planet. When this last one was bound and determined to kick us out of our building, after we cleaned and improved it, that did it. We surrender.

Unless you have worked a 20 hour day, helping customers and packing boxes during the day, and working on marketing and web site changes at night, you can't really understand the thrill and happy exhaustion of having a Macintosh sales website. Seeing Mac customers happy that you have restored their Macs to working order is almost enough pay by itself. Being an entrepreneur is a wonderful thing...if you have enough capital.

Without the unceasing work of our talented staff, we could have never done this for four years and seven months and still be friends. Randy has worked everyday and will continue to shut down the business even though he works until sometimes 3 or 4:00a.m. as a theatre manager. Penney worked so long for very little. She now comes in and repairs in the middle of two school bus shifts (She really is a saint.). Alan continues to be the technical brains of the operation without whose encyclopedic computer knowledge we would never to do anything. The Boss Lady is a Mom, a commercial artist, a 'professional' League of Women Voters member and, for the past two years, the president of the local Stateline Macintosh User Group. Any one of those jobs would have been enough. I remain the guardian of the Basement, but there will be no more basement. Would we do this again? I hate to say we would.

Nora and Delia Ephron wrote it perfectly with Meg Ryan's monologue in the movie "You've Got Mail". "People are always telling me that change is a good thing. What they are really saying is that something that you didn't want to happen at all has happened. My store is closing this week....It's a lovely store and in a week it will be something really depressing, like a Baby Gap. Soon it will just be a memory. In fact, someone, some foolish person will probably think it's a tribute to the city, the way it keeps changing on you, the way you can never count on it, or something. I know because that's the sort of thing I would say. But the truth is: I'm heartbroken. It feels like a part of me has died....And no one can ever make it right."

Goodnight.