Back before Best Buy introduced the Geek Squad and Circuit City Stores followed with firedog, there was Geeks on Call.

In 1999, the Norfolk company invented the idea of providing mobile IT services for households and small businesses. Best Buy copied the business model, all the way down to the use of "Geeks" in the name and equipping its mobile computer repairmen with funky looking cars. Avoiding the blatant rip-off, Circuit City Stores dispensed with the geeky nomenclature and pursued the rescue dog motif.

Unfortunately for Geeks on Call, the tiny start-up company that pioneered the market lacked the infrastructure of hundreds of consumer electronic stores around the country to connect with masses of customers. So, although it invented the idea, it never succeeded in generating much name recognition.

I followed Geeks on Call back when I published VA Newswire. (The profile I wrote in 2004 is still online.) It was still a privately held company then. Now it's publicly traded, and San Francisco-based Emerging Growth Research has picked up coverage of the stock with a "buy" rating.

Emerging Growth Research is modeling greater than 100 percent revenue growth for Geeks on Call over the next fiscal year and profitability by fiscal 2009 year-end. "As computer and consumer electronic technology become increasingly complex businesses," writes Joseph Noel, consumers are increasingly turning to outsourced IT services." The fast-growing market is roughly $8 billion a year, and it is "underserved by an additional $11 billion due to a limited selection of reliable vendors."

The only other two viable vendors in a highly fragmented market dominated by mom-and-pop shops, the report notes, are Geek Squad and firedog.

Bacon's bottom line: Last month I wrote, "Firedog to the Rescue," citing a different research report sugggesting that Circuit City could double its firedog revenues to $400 million this year, giving credence to CEO Philip Schoonover's insistence that the money-losing consumer electronics chain could turn its fortunes around.

Emerging Growth Research's coverage of Geeks on Call would seem to lend credence to that forecast. Indeed, one could anticipate firedog becoming Circuit City's great growth story -- assuming the company can survive the current economic downturn and withering competition for consumer electronics products. Even if Circuit City's home IT service reaches the $400 million revenue forecast this year, that dog has a lot room to run in a $19 billion market.