[TenTec] Ten-Tec and the dealers

[Ten-Tec Inc. Amateur Radio Sales]

At 09:35 AM 1/31/03 -0500, you wrote:

>I don't remember exactly when TenTec went factory only, but it was sometime
>in the very late 1980's or early 1990's.  Hopefully Scott will chime in here
>with the date, I'm sure he has it in his records somewhere.

Ten-Tec went factory direct in 1992.

Not to get too far into it, but there were a couple of reasons that we
elected to go factory direct.  One was that by the early 90's most ham
gear was being sold on (800) lines and (as has been pointed out
already) many of the smaller dealers were being squeezed out of
business by the more aggressive larger dealers.  Ten-Tec sold a lot
of equipment through the small dealers, and as they began to quickly
disappear our volume was not beng picked up by the bigger dealers.
It got to the point where we had simply lost a great deal of our
distribution network.  We figured that we could install our own set
of (800) lines, lower the prices on all the equipment, and have better
contact with our customer base as a result.  All of that has come to
pass, and after 11 years of being factory-direct it's safe to say we
are more than pleased with the outcome.  I am kind of surprised
that some of the other companies in amateur radio (not including
Icom/Kenwood/Yaesu) haven't done the same - no one sells your
product or has the intellectual investment like those that are actually
working where it's being built.

Scott Robbins, W4PA


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