Strong engineering support for reseller partners drives rapid growth of TSC Auto ID

TSC Auto ID Technology America Inc.has been in business in the Americas for the past decade. In its first year, with only a single barcode printer model to sell, the company closed the books on $140,000 in sales. Now, 10 years later, the 14-person operation sells and supports 18 barcode printer models and recently posted more than $10 million in sales in 2010.


The rapid growth of TSCAA in North America and South America during its 10-year history is the result of several key factors: the creation of a loyal group of dedicated resellers, continuous improvement in the organization’s products line, and strong engineering support of its reseller partners.

"Early in our existence we had a limited bar code printer line to offer our customers. What set us apart from other new barcode printer companies was our investment in U.S. offices and our development of a loyal group of resellers who know they can depend on TSC for technical and engineering support," said Kevin Aie, TSCAA’s chief executive officer.

"Our dealers are loyal because we treat them like the partners they are," said Aie. "We always listen to suggestions for ways to improve our hardware and firmware. And, most importantly, we have a major investment in engineering support here in the United States. So we can offer our partners much more custom support than the typical barcode printer company."

Business growing rapidly
Today, TSCAA’s headquarters in Pomona, Calif., manages accounting, inventory, technical support, and customer services for TSCAA customers throughout the Americas. And TSCAA’s Orlando, Fla. facility is home to sales and technical-support operations. With two U.S.-based operations, TSCAA is able to quickly respond to customer needs and growing market opportunities in North America, Central America and South America.

"Our business is growing rapidly as resellers, distributors and others turn to us for label printing solutions that are specifically designed for cost-effective integration into their existing businesses," said David Lundeen, TSCAA’s vice president of sales and marketing.

"We’ve concentrated on developing and delivering products and services that offer a unique mix of powerful programming tools and high reliability at very low cost. In short, we are delivering exactly what our fast-growing reseller base is asking for, and we will continue to keep up with their demands as we expand throughout the Americas."

Talented engineering team
A key member of the TSCAA team is Ken Chou, an Orlando-office project engineer in charge of engineering and support. Shortly after coming to TSC in 1991, he authored the Eltron EPL2 printer language, the world’s most popular barcode printer language. Since rejoining the company in 2002, he has been a key contributor to the rapid growth of barcode printer sales in the Americas market.

"My major focus at TSC is to improve our customer support, introduce our dealers to the many capabilities offered by TSC bar code printers and help the company continuously improve its firmware," Chou said.

Due in great part to Chou’s efforts, TSC has seen dramatic growth in recent years of its barcode printer offering and firmware capabilities. In 2006, for example, TSC released its TSPL-EZ firmware, which at the time was the most advanced firmware ever written by the company. It broke new ground for the barcode industry by packaging multi-language emulations, scalable True-Type font rendering, advanced calibration, and a powerful stand-alone programming language into a single factory-installed printer language.

Helping customers grow their business
TSC America works very closely with each of its partners to help them grow their business. Sometimes that might mean helping a partner develop SNMP capabilities that address a sales opportunity at a large-scale networked facility. Other times it might entail helping a customer convert a non-barcode data stream into a useful barcode with human readable information.

Take for example the customer-support efforts of Daniel Rodriguez, who joined TSCAA in 2010 as junior engineer, and is now deeply involved in TSCAA’s reseller support program. He often assists customers in writing stand-alone programs for TSC bar code printers, integrating TSC printers with electronic scales, and troubleshooting difficult applications. And he recently prepared a webinar that trains resellers in the how-to of developing standalone barcode printer solutions. (By the way, resellers who master the skill of value-added programming report earning higher margins on their barcode printer sales.)

Always listening to customers
TSCAA’s joint development effort with Mid America Business Systems, an identification-solutions company located in Columbus, Ohio, is merely one example of its customer-support commitment. In 2003, Mid America was searching for a barcode-printer company to help it find a way to replace the existing printers at a local hospital with new printers capable of using the hospital’s existing data stream to print 2D barcodes. A TSCAA team lead by Chou spent hundreds of hours working with Mid America to deliver updated firmware to handle the complicated task. Today, Mid America has more than 5,000 TSC bar code printers installed throughout the United States and is now expanding into Canada.

"Our willingness to listen to customer needs and develop solutions to those needs has been the cornerstone of success for TSC America," said Aie. "There are numerous situations where customers have come to us looking for creative solutions, and TSC has delivered new firmware and hardware capabilities to meet those needs."

Expanding partner support
Today, Aie, Chou and other team members are working to expand TSCAA’s pre-sales and post-sales engineering support. With more customers than ever, TSC has introduced new training and support tools to help resellers harness the power of the company’s firmware and emulation software.

"We are now using web-based tools to run product-training webinars while directly supporting our end users," Chou said. "When customers have issues, we can get online with them, take over their computer and help them set up their TSC bar code printer, which usually takes less than five minutes. We are willing to spend whatever time it takes to satisfy our customers."

TSCAA is committed to growing its support organization as it continues to add to its lineup of high-quality, high-value barcode printers.

"As the introduction of new barcode printer models drives more resellers to TSC, we are more prepared than ever to meet our responsibilities to our growing network of partners throughout the Americas, " Aie said.