2A - Sanday, July 30, 1989 - North Shore News

Local high-tech firms market globally

From page 20
facilities to the approximately
20,000 square foot Kodak building
on Keith Road in October.

Said DBA director of marketing
services Maureen Hunter: ‘We
were looking at a couple of dif-
ferent options on the North Shore.
We were lucky that the Kodak
building did come up. We did go
across and look at space in the

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Burnaby and Richmond areas, but
we're all very much North Shore
people. We really prefer to remain
on the North Shore.”

DBA epitomizes the classic
high-tech business success story.
Bensted began the company as a
consultant working for a U.S.
manufacturing company. While
examining the feasibility of

NEIGHBOUR

distributing American telecom-
munications products in Canada,
he saw the opportunity for
manufacturing under licence for
the U.S. company and distributing
its products through Canadian
telephone companies.

The company’s engineering and
research and development
capacities were developed while

Pe
PROUD TO BE YOUR

Established in 1956, Canadian owned Stanley
Drugs is the largest drug manufacturer west of Ontario.
Our B.C. plant produces over 300 products covering a

wide range of Prescription Drugs, Hospital Specialty
Products, Vitamins, Health Supplements and O.T.C.
Products. Our service area inciudes retail and hospital _.
pharmacies across Canada as well as export markets ,.@ 4
throughout the world.

Stanley Drug Products Ltd.
1353 Main Street, North Vancouver

Stanley Drug Products Ltd.
1276 Ellesmere Road, Scarborough
Ontario, Canada M1P 2x9

British Columbia, Canada V7J 1C5

4

Mohawk Lubricants

Division of

130 Forester Street, North Vancouver, B.C.

Mohawk Oil Co. Ltd.

distributing the U.S. products.
“We started working on our own
products and that’s really seen the
growth of the company in the last
few years. We went from being a
manufacturer to a distribution
company to being more of a de-
veloper of equipment,’’ said
Hunter.

DBA’s flagship product is a
business telephone designed for the
small-business market. The Smar-
Talk 208 was designed and devel-
oped by DBA director of engineer-
ing Phil Holland. DBA has put out
into the market about 40,000 two-
line SmarTalk units to date since
June 1987. Three-line units were
introduced to the market about
three months ago.

According to Hunter, the suc-
cess of the product is attributable
to quality, product support, and
importantly, the initial identifica-
tion of a need in-the market not
being addressed by the competi-
tion.

“When deregulation happened
in the telecemmunications industry
in 1980-81, which meant that you
as an individual could go out and
purchase your own equipment
rather than buy or lease from 2
telephone company, everybody
started competing with telephone
compuanies at the large end,”’ said
Hunter. ‘‘They went after the guys
that had the large systems.
Everybody forgot about the very
small business person, the single
business lines, the two business

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PO EF ei $e.

Mohawk Oil Co. Ltd. is proud to receive
the corporate environmental leadership
award in June 1989 at Environment

lines.””

Statistics show that approxi-
mately 80 per cent of Canadian
businesses require two phone lines
and under. It’s a large market for
companies like DBA. Today,
of the 10 regulated telephone
companies in Canada, eight of
them are standardized in the
SmarTaik product for the rental
market.

DBA has just established com-
panies in the U.S., England and
the Netherlands. The company has
agents in Greece and Italy and is
projecting total revenues this year
in the order of $10 million. The
North Vancouver headquarters
employ 35 people.

Hunter sees a neat bit of irony in
the fact that the SmarTalk tele-
phones are produced on the same
Korean assembly line that pumps
out Northern Telecom’s (the com-
petition’s) product.

For the immediate future, DBA
is developing add-ons for Smar-
Talk. In addition, the company
received approval in June for a
$766,011 federal Industrial
Research Assistance Program
CRAP) grant for research and de-
velopment of digital teiecom-
munications for small business and
larger users.

Based on survey results, on
average, firms interviewed believe
they’ll need approximately 20,000
to 25,000 square feet of business
space each as they grow over the
next five years.

Canada's first annual Environmenta!
Achievement Awards.

929-1282

X

MOHAWK