Tessco Seeks VARs With Mobile Touch

Wireless distribution expert Tessco wants to reach out and touch more VARs, specifically those with a data networking background.

Kip Williams, vice president of market development, said approximately 450 to 500 IT solution providers are active customers, but Tessco is eager to take on more. In fact, the Hunt Valley, Md.. company hopes to recruit as many as 4,500 VARs and systems integrators migrating to the world of mobility, according to Williams and other Tessco executives.

What’s the pitch to these would-be customers? A lineup of close to 38,000 products from more than 450 manufacturers, ranging from towers to wireless LANs to antennas, makes Tessco a major force in the wireless infrastructure world, although its traditional customer base lies with integrators boasting a radio background.

Nonetheless, Tessco said in late April that its commercial and government business grew 20 percent in its 2005 fiscal year, ended March 27. The distributor logged a 45 percent increase in sales for the period to $513 million, while net income leapt 110 percent to $6.1 million.

“A lot of the networking guys have been buying from the data products distributors,” Williams said. “Our challenge is to get them to see the value of Tessco as the wireless portion of that business.”

Tessco’s emphasis on technical knowledge that is solution-based rather than product-centric is resonating with customers.

“This company is in tune with what we are trying to do,” said Brad Mack, vice president at iGov, a government integrator in McLean, Va., that has worked with Tessco for about 18 months.

Mack said iGov tapped Tessco as a core component of its iSolutions for Government initiative, which aims to provide secure wireless networks to government agencies. One of the most important benefits Tessco offers is extensive engineering resources, which helped iGov come to grips with the types of wireless towers the integrator should select as part of its overall solution.

“With this kind of technology, it’s a dance,” Mack said. “These types of products take engineering resources and expertise. Because they have a focus, they are able to invest in those resources for us.”

Perry Vincent, president of Louisiana Radio Communications, a solution provider in Lake Charles, La., and a longtime Tessco customer, also commends the Tessco team’s “personable” nature and its willingness to find answers. “Their knowledge is starting to really increase,” Vincent said. “They’re informative, and if they don’t know it, they’re going to find the answer.”

Among other things, Tessco has developed at least 16 application guides to help illustrate wireless in action. Security implementations are just one example. Under this scenario, the distributor has tested which cameras will work properly at various radio frequencies. “We have engineers and a lab. Before we carry any product, we test it and try to get it to fail,” said Scott McClure, product business unit manager at Tessco.

Make no mistake, Tessco is well aware there is no one-size-fits-all approach to many problems its solution provider customers face in the field. Although the distributor does provide product bundles to address certain solution areas, they are meant more as reference designs.

Aside from security, some broader solution areas where Tessco believes network integrators will find business opportunities are providing alternate technologies for T1 replacement, offering options for improving in-building cellular phone coverage, and deploying mesh network products fit for public safety applications, said Rick Guipe, senior vice president of infrastructure at Tessco. And, moving forward, this will increasingly involve helping solution providers better understand the broadband wireless backbone options they have beyond 802.11x products.

“The real key is application-oriented solutions that go beyond a simple wireless LAN,” Guipe said.