Bill Farah, a graduate of The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) has always been a problem solver.  In the early seventies, Bill founded Vanmakers, a recreational vehicle conversion company, in Southern California. The company converted work vans into vehicles with creature comforts for local automobile dealerships along with the walk in trade. The company also converted motorhomes and semi trailers into recreational vehicles, mobile showrooms, instant replay studios for the entertainment industry and radar systems vehicles and mobile command centers for government agencies. From the very beginning, Bill learned his craft from the tradesmen that he hired. He enlisted retired electricians, carpenters and plumbers to help him develop quality products that were equipment friendly and took into consideration human factors (Ergonomics). The company flourished and became known for its quality, its innovations and ability to create solutions in very confined spaces. In the late seventies, one of Vanmakers major clients in the defense industry came to Bill with a new need. They had a computer operations control center for large mainframe computers that was growing by leaps and bounds. They needed to increase the machinery capacuty of their control room to meet present and future growth without expanding out of the existing space. So, Bill designed and manufactured the first state of the art IBM mainframe computer control center that stacked monitors and peripherals in “Starship” style consoles. As luck would have it, IBM  used this new style control center as a model to sell their mainframe products. It was not long before IBM CEs across country were made aware of Bill’s expertise and began recommending him to their clients. It was at that point that Bill made the decision to change the company’s direction into a business model that would grow in parallel with America’s expanding data processing industry. Americon was born as both a command center furniture manufacturer and a nationally recognized audiovisual integrator.

As Bill solved inherent problems with his professional solutions, he advertised them to large multi-national corporations and government agencies across the country. The company grew and flourished in the wake of IBM’s phenomenal growth in the mainframe business. In the mid 90’s, the company started focusing more towards the needs of Network Operation Centers (NOCs) along with emergency management. After the events that surrounded disasters like 911 and hurricane Katrina, it became apparent that emergency management and security were places that the then twenty year old company needed to have a presence. So Americon, who was now not only the premiere technical furniture manufacturer in the U.S. and a nationally-recognized audiovisual integrator, began offering turnkey solutions that included its own brand of video walls under the name, Visionmaster. For almost five decades, under Bill’s guidance, Americon has set itself apart by its ability to marry many disciples into turnkey solutions. In a nationally televised interview in ’06 with the late former secretary of state, Alexander Haige, Bill focused on issues in creating a “state of the art” emergency management center for government agencies.