Collection agency: Jonathan Manhan is a modern-day junk dealer who stays on the cutting edge of the business by dealing in used electronics equipment and keeping up with trends.

Go ahead and call Jonathan Manhan a junk man--he won't mind.

Junk, after all, has earned him a living since 1988 when he launched BCS Recycling Specialists.

And this year, junk will gross his Canoga Park-based company about $4 million.

"It's fun figuring out ways to make money out of junk," Manhan said candidly.

Of course, Manhan's business has come a long way from the days when junk men prowled alleys and the homes of those down on their luck for furniture or clothing.

BCS is an electronics recycler, a kind of wholesaler of used, surplus and excess computer or audio components, cell phones, ink jet cartridges and other detritus of today's electronic age, which it buys up or collects and sells to others to be re-manufactured or for disposal.

Nor is the junk business as simple as it used to be. You've got to know that a computer power supply, made of many different metals, will need to be separated and broken down before it can be recycled as scrap, and that China, with a labor force of eight billion is one of the few places able to do that cost effectively.

You've got to know how to veer in and out of businesses, as the economy evolves and manufacturing trends change.

And, perhaps most of all, you've got to know who to turn to, one day when you've got a lot of toner cartridges, and the next, when you may be trying to sell old cell phones.

"He's definitely a master at finding the niches and finding the ins and outs of any new business he gets involved with," said Michael Bushman, president of MB Sales, a Canoga Park ink jet and toner cartridge recycler who has worked with Manhan.

Since it was founded in 1988, BCS has shifted gears regularly, changing the products it recycles as the Valley's economy and its manufacturing base has changed.

Diverse inventory

Today, the company recycles items as diverse as floppy drives, networking equipment, television monitors, personal computers and cell phones. Some are sold to re-manufacturers, some to brokers and some, like the high-end cell phones it also collects, directly to consumers on e-Bay.

BCS operates out of a 20,000-square-foot warehouse with a 35,000-square foot yard, where hundreds of TV and computer monitors, keyboards, and other electronics are stored before being shipped throughout the world.

Manhan, whose plans to join his father's aerospace components business after high school graduation were scuttled when the company closed, started out working for a friend in the scrap metal business, and after about a year went into business for himself.

The Valley was awash with computer components manufacturers, and many of them had excess inventories they wanted to unload.

Manhan remembers checking the Yellow Pages to find companies willing to buy the components. He made a few calls, found out what they were paying, and went back to the manufacturers, offering them a sum that would net a tidy profit when resold.

He worked with virtually no overhead--just a phone and an answering machine--buying components for a few dollars and selling them for twice as much and more. The huge inventories he moved made up for the tiny unit prices.

"I thought I was the smartest guy in the world," he recalled.

But by the mid-1990s, component prices had begun to drop and manufacturers moved offshore to compete, taking with them the once ample supply of inventories.

Manhan started providing companies who were upgrading their equipment with a pickup and disposal service for their old computers and other electronics.

The strategy worked for a while, but it wasn't long before computer technology began to make rapid-fire advances, and with older computers quickly becoming obsolete, there were few outlets to resell them.

It was then that Manhan turned to ink jet and toner cartridges, which could be sold to re-manufacturers who refilled the old, discarded cartridges and resold them.

Soon the company was adding cell phones and rechargeable batteries, television monitors, even video tapes.

The company also has a major contract with Best Buy stores, outfitting each of the locations with large recycling bins for cell phones, ink jet cartridges and rechargeable batteries.

Each week, BCS ships out two or three containers of scrap to China.

Most recently, the company has become a contractor for the state's waste reduction act, collecting all types of monitors for a fee.

Charity work

And BCS participates with several charities, donating a portion of the proceeds of cell phone and ink jet recycling programs to causes such as the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and United Cerebral Palsy. Plans to add the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation are also in the works.

"If you get enough things going, if one thing isn't pulling its weight you have another to pick up the slack," Manhan said.

Ask Manhan how he has managed to diversify several times over, always finding outlets both to buy items and to resell them, and his answer will usually begin with, "I knew a guy."

"Anytime you meet somebody, I always consider it an opportunity," Manhan said. "And opportunity knocks every day."

Indeed, the business has required an extensive network of contacts that those who know Manhan say he has cultivated with unusual prowess.

Bushman, who is also a longtime friend, and the first person Manhan worked for out of high school, believes it is his people skills that have been critical in Manhan's success.

"When we go out to dinner, he pretty much knows everybody everywhere we go," Bushman said. "He's able to identify with everybody's personality, and that's what I find pretty rare in business. That's what I think makes him so nimble."

He will likely have to stay nimble.

Unlike most businesses that operate with a 5-year plan, Manhan finds it impossible to predict where the business will take him tomorrow.

"In five years, I don't know (what the business will look like)," he said. "Technology could change. Ink jets could become obsolete. You just stay on the edge."

BCS Recycling Specialists

Year Founded: 1988

Revenues in 2000: $1.7 million

Employees in 2000:3

Revenues in 2005 (projected): $4 million

Employees in 2005: 7

Driving Force: Increasing legislative efforts to make recycling mandatory.