Entrepreneurship, for Brian Pettey, means recognizing an opportunity, wheeling quickly to fill a need, and seizing market share. How else to explain the evolution of a simple robotics company, founded in his college dorm room a decade ago, into a leader in motorized camera platforms for the video industry?

Or, for that matter, for many of the roughly 6,000 other robotics components made or distributed through his company in Winfield, Kan.?

“I’m very, very competitive,” the 36-year-old Pettey says. “When I see something in another market and I know we can do it better, that’s it for me. I have to do it.”

Since launching the company, then known as Brian Thomas Robotics (drawing on on his first and middle names), he has expanded its reach from simple robotics used as classroom demonstration objects in schools.

“We’ve evolved tremendously,” Pettey said. “The education side of building robots now is a very small part of our business. On the education side, you can only go so high-tech. It was great for launching, but from a financial standpoint, we wanted to move on to much higher-tech products.”

That happened about eight years ago, by turning to meet the needs of those who, like engineers dabbling in robotics at home after work, were seeking components to perform specific machine movements, or to interface with their computers and other devices.

“That’s really when the business took off,” Pettey said. “I never realized how big the market was until we launched the Web site.”

The site, servocity.com, allowed the company to reach a wide audience. “Instead of building full robots and trying to sell them on-line, we built the components, so you could build your own to meet your specific needs,” Pettey said. “So it’s critical that all our parts work together.”

Far from the public perception of a 21st-century robot being a device that serves you tea on the veranda, modern robotics involves components built into machines performing a huge range of tasks. And because those tasks can be so specialized, volume is not the key to success. Instead, Petty said, the focus has to remain on quality, dependable parts.

Among them: couplers, fasteners, batteries, speed controls, joystick platforms, motor mounts—a lengthy list of items that allow professional gearheads and basement tinkerers alike to explore their own robotic visions. The range of uses? For unmanned aerial vehicles. Computer interfaces for industrial uses. Radio transmitters and receivers.

One example of Petty’s ability to identify a potential market came with the pan-tilt-roll assemblies for film and video production. Petty recognized that he was getting requests for parts that could be used to build units that weren’t otherwise available. Extensive research and testing produced an assembly for less than a third of the cost of what a spec unit might run. Within six months, they had shipped 500 units, adding nearly $500,000 in sales. Clients include NASA, Time Warner Cable, the Discovery Channel, all three major networks, Fox News, Disney and more.

“I wish I could tell you that we targeted clients like that,” Pettey said, “but it really comes out of building the best product we can, and then through word-of-mouth. It’s amazing what the Internet can do.”

From first-year sales of about $40,000, Robotzone’s revenues are comfortably into seven figures. He opened a new 30,000-square-foot building this year, more than doubling his previous floorspace for the dozen people he now employs—including his father, who took an early retirement to become the first hire.

But the company didn’t get where it is without some soul-searching.

“After a few years, we sat down, and decided that, first and foremost, we were an idea company,” Pettey said. “We had all these ideas, but not enough time to act on them. Now we outsource in Wichita with machine shops and the downtime they have from their aviation clients. Some we have made overseas. Whereas we were probably an A-to-Z manufacturer early on, now we’re more like T-to-Z, finishing a lot of it on site here. Now, we outsource as much as possible and try to focus on the ideas.”