TECHNOLOGY : Rising Star Services Gets What It Needed to Work Down Backlog

Rising Star Contract Services Inc., a Costa Mesa start-up company that has been vocal about its effort to find financing, has secured equipment to begin working down its multimillion-dollar backlog of orders.

Shepherd Bentley, president of the 30-employee electronics assembly firm, said the company was able to lease equipment at bargain rates from a company that got the equipment from Bentley’s former employer, Symbol Technologies Inc. in Costa Mesa.

Symbol is relocating its operations to New York as part of a consolidation and has laid off several hundred people during the past year. Bentley and Shawn Lloyd, executives who ran a major Symbol division, decided to launch Rising Star from Symbol’s ashes.

The company was strapped for cash, even though it reported a backlog of $4 million in orders from potential customers who liked the idea of saving high-tech jobs in Orange County. Rising Star began production last week with the new equipment.

“It’s a happy ending to the problems we had earlier this month,” Bentley said. “We are now on target for our funding plans.”