Growing Like a Dream
Stutler Technologies finds new ways to expand its business
By Bobbi Mlynar
Saturday, October 21, 2006
J.J. Stutler calls it daydreaming. His competitors may call it something else.
By any name, when the Stutler Technologies crew sits down to kick around ideas about possibilities and potential, their creative “daydreaming” ensures that the company stays several steps ahead of the competition. Stutler’s managers jokingly claim that he sleeps on a magic pillow that provides the innovative ideas for success.
The 10-year-old company in recent years has burgeoned into a national force in the communication systems industry, designing and installing wireless phone systems, surveillance cameras, sophisticated wireless Internet systems, voiceover IP, and a variety of other technically advanced options for businesses.
“We were just kind of the small guy on the block trying to pick up all the businesses we could find,” Stutler said, talking about the early years. “We still do all of these things. ... Over time, it just kind of grew into doing more complete networking and phone systems.” Now, Stutler Technologies is doing even more than that.
“If you’re not moving somewhere or changing something, you’re falling behind,” said Dave Kirk, who is in charge of business development and marketing.
“What J.J. and the crew have gotten into are a lot of ‘firsts.’ They haven’t been afraid to dive into new areas that other people have been unwilling to touch,” Kirk said.
Stutler hadn’t planned to come to Emporia as he was growing up in West Virginia. After high school, he began working as an installer for a phone company and also was a volunteer firefighter. The phone job took him around the United States to install equipment.
“Kansas was one of my states,” Stutler said. “I met a girl in Salina.”
She was about to graduate from college, and both wanted more than a long-distance relationship.
“She started trying to find me a job that didn’t keep me on the road so much,” Stutler said.
Emporia advertised for a firefighter, Stutler applied, got the job, and moved to Emporia. His marriage to Gwen, the girl from Salina, is as old as the company he founded in August 1996.
Stutler worked 24-hour shifts at the fire department and devoted much of his time off to his fledgling company.
“Early on, I had a lot of guys at the fire department who would help me pull wires on their days off,” Stutler said.
Before long, he needed to hire a couple of full-time employees and soon he was faced with a choice: working for the fire department or working for himself.
“Five or six years into it, it was two full-time jobs. Honestly, I had planned on retiring from the fire department, and they wouldn’t let me,” Stutler said, referring to Tim Dorsey, co-owner and general manager, and Dave Kirk.
Dorsey and Kirk saw the company developing at a rapid pace, and helped Stutler realize that the business was going strong enough to warrant leaving the fire department.
Stutler said that much of the company’s success can be attributed to the highly skilled staff that has come to the company, often through attrition from Valu-Line and Birch Telecom. Stutler himself worked for Valu-Line for about a year and a half.
“It’s all kind of a web back to Valu-Line,” Stutler said.
“A lot of the people we’ve been able to bring on were very skilled professional people,” Dorsey explained.
Those veterans — like Tom Mains, Tim Hines, Joe Reed and Roger Troutner — had the skills and abilities that allowed them to do their jobs immediately, without months or even years of training.
Dorsey had worked for Valu-Line for nine years before joining Stutler in 2002 and becoming a partner.
“Tim and I kind of worked out a deal,” Stutler said. “With that, Tim brought a lot of resources and real-world experience.”
Together, the Stutler team holds considerable knowledge and experience in designing and installing systems. With commitment and creativity, they have consistently taken the company and its products to the next level and have avoided many of the pitfalls that have plagued similar companies.
“A lot of things are happening all at once, and you’ve got to stop and think about it a while. ...We saw a lot of ‘Gold Rush,’” Dorsey said, recounting the miners who flooded California in the mid-1800’s to search for gold, and failed. “The guys who really succeeded were the guys who were selling the picks and shovels.”
He likened Stutler’s strategy to that of the picks-and-shovels salesmen.
“We’re very committed to keeping that going, for diversity’s sake,” Dorsey said.
Much of the work done by the company results in efficiencies and economies for the buyers, who are located in 35 states, from Alaska’s North Slope to Florida.
“The reason we don’t have the other 15 (states) is we haven’t had time for it yet,” Stutler said, with a laugh that often punctuates his conversation.
In this part of Kansas, the Stutler-installed wireless network for Burlington schools district linked two school buildings without the expense and disruption of tearing up the street, installing underground cable and re-paving the street.
“Now we can have wire, we can have wireless, we can have TV cable,” Stutler said. “It really makes it flexible on how service can be provided. A lot of times, it’s more cost-effective.”
Soon after that, Stutler Technologies installed systems for the city of Emporia to connect remote locations to the main city network.
“We’ve got some security measures that encrypt, so you can’t use a scanner to pick it up,” Stutler said, adding that the Kansas Bureau of Investigation checked and approved the system.
A surveillance system the company recently installed in the Lee Beran Recreation Center allowed officials to identify a youngster who stole keys from the center. The men said that surveillance cameras — with a variety of options — have been installed in an increasing number of schools nationwide.
Stutler is in the process of installing a wireless system for Tri-County Telephone in Council Grove, which initially will provide high-speed wireless Internet to much of northwest Emporia; plans are to extend the system throughout the city.
The company has installed systems, closed-circuit television hook-ups and paging for many businesses, governmental units, hospitals, and schools.
“That’s still a big part of what we do in eastern Kansas,” Kirk said.
In Overbrook, Stutler designed and installed a wireless system that allows the school district to offer wireless Internet service to the area. Money earned from the service goes back into the district to buy technology equipment for the schools.
Stutler Technologies also has been exceptionally successful in working with companies that hold 700 MHz licenses. When those licenses recently were auctioned nationally to the highest bidders, rural telephone companies won a sizable number of the 70 licenses issued.
“We’re responsible for 85 percent of the build-out of 700 MHz in the United States,” Kirk said.
The company also has earned recognition from Airspan, an international equipment manufacturing company. Stutler Technologies designs and builds many of its systems around Airspan equipment, and is Airspan’s leading distributor in North America.
Sales for Stutler Technologies have doubled in each of the past three years, going from $1.5 million to $3.5 million to $7 million while the number of employees went from 10 in 2003 to 22 in 2005 to 34 employees this year.
“Like any small business, there’s a lot of things that can jump out and get you, and we’ve had to jump a lot of hurdles,” Dorsey said, reflecting on the work, thought and man-hours that went into building the success.
“The whole reason is, because we’ve got the best guys in the world,” Stutler said. “And girls.”