By FRED KRONER
fred@mahometnews.com
Raptor Power Systems may be one of Mahomet’s least-known businesses, despite its central location along Main Street.
“We don’t do any walk-in business,” owner Evan El Koury said, “and I don’t know if we’ve sold any orders in Illinois.”
At the very least, its inclusion as one of three finalists for the Mahomet Area Chamber of Commerce Overall Business of the Year award could make the company more of a household name.
Raptor Power Systems has six employees, “counting me,” El Koury said.
“We do military contracts. Most of our work is with the Navy.”
The family business originally started in 1989, but was reorganized in 1995, when El Koury was a high school freshman.
He is the sole owner of Raptor Power Systems, which was originally based in Savoy.
In October, 2018, it moved to Mahomet.
He and his family, which includes his wife Kathleen and children Brennan and Stella (ages 6 and 1, respectively) were already living in Mahomet. That moved took place in 2017 for one reason.
“We moved to Mahomet for the schools,” El Koury said.
It didn’t make sense to keep the business in Savoy.
“I didn’t want to commute,” El Koury said.
Mahomet is where they consider home.
“We like the pace of life here and the niceness of the people,” El Koury said.
El Koury and his wife met in college, at George Mason University, and spent several of their first post-college years in New Jersey.
Part of his wife’s early childhood was spent in Savoy, and she was anxious to return in Central Illinois.
Since the location of the business is not significant, the original move was made in 2007.
“All we do is talk on the phone and design products,” El Koury said. “Then take the design and send it to the production facility.
“We can be anywhere, and we felt this was as good of place as any. I have family north of Chicago.”
El Koury and his family are happy in Mahomet, but will likely look for a new location for the business by the time the company’s lease is up in about two years.
“We’ll probably move,” El Koury said. “We’ve outgrown this place, and with the revitalization plan, they probably wouldn’t want us (downtown).”
When the search for a new location begins in earnest, El Koury said there will be one pre-requisite.
“We must stay contained within Mahomet,” he said. “We’ll continue to grow here. We’ll look at building a site because the size we need is not currently available.”
Unlike many businesses who join the Mahomet Area Chamber of Commerce, El Koury and Raptor Power Systems weren’t looking to increase their visibility.
“We didn’t join to get more business or make people know who we are,” El Koury said. “We joined because we saw all the amazing events the Chamber was doing.
“We joined to be part of the community and to help the community.”
Three months after joining the Chamber, El Koury became a board member.
“It has been an incredible experience,” he said. “We do things that matter for the defense of our country, things that we can be proud of.
“We support the data centers that 30 to 40 percent of the country uses. Even though our work is not known to the public, that’s fine. We do things that are meaningful.”
It’s a business with its share of challenges.
“The biggest challenge we face is always being on the leading edge of technology and staying on the edge,” El Koury said. “We have to keep ourselves educated on so many topics to make sure the products we are releasing are on top of the technology.”
Raptor Power Systems is a manufacturing and engineering firm which provides distribution solutions, uninterruptible power supplies and switchmode power supplies to the military, data centers and cryptocurrency mining operations.
It is a part of numerous military programs, including the Patroit Missile Program and the DDG program. Raptor Power Systems is also the largest U.S. manufacturer of cryptocurrency power distribution units.
El Koury’s role model is his father.
“He’s a great friend and a great mentor,” El Koury said. “He was a dad who threw the baseball with me, but at the dinner table, we talked business.
“Those moments are meaningful to me. When we drove somewhere, we didn’t listen to the radio. We talked about business.”
El Koury absorbed as much as he could; enough to know what he wanted to do with his life.
At least, after he spent his first year in college in a different area.
“I first went to college for animal sciences,” he said.
He then switched to integrated marketing communications, with a minor in small business management.
What he is does for a living, he said, “I’ve lived my whole life.”
The name plate on his desk tells what others think of El Koury.
It was a Christmas gift two years ago.
“One of my best clients needed something that was impossible,” El Koury recalled.
He didn’t concede defeat easily, however.
“I made it happen,” El Koury said.
The name plate simply identifies the Raptor Power Systems owner as “Mr. make it happen.”
Added El Koury: “That has become our slogan.”
