Above: Frank Cannata and CJ Cannata (3rd and 4th from right, respectively) take photographs with (from left to right) NECS’s Dana Cunningham, VP, sales; Donn Clarke, director of sales; Charlie Tiernan, founder and president; Vince McHugh, VP, network solutions; Mike McLaughlin, VP of service; and Mark Gallo, service manager.
Stories from The Cannata Report’s 2017 dealer tour conclude for the year with a lesson in old-fashioned entrepreneurialship and a taste of the affable Charlie Tiernan’s infectious humor.
Frank Cannata (left) interviews Charlie Tiernan (right) with executives Mike McLaughlin (center left), Vince McHugh (center right).
As we continued on our dealer tour across the country, it gave me pause to reflect about where we started, where we had been, and where we were going next. This past year, we traveled from the East Coast to the West Coast and many destinations in between, starting in Salt Lake City, Utah, with subsequent trips to Sacramento, California, and Wausau, Wisconsin, among many others, before wrapping things up for the year in Woburn, Massachusetts. (Please see our house ad on page 41 for a list of dealerships we visited in 2017). It’s been a lot of ground to cover, but we have enjoyed every stop along the way. Our most recent visit with New England Copy Specialists (NECS) in Woburn, Massachusetts, was informative, very social, and thoroughly enjoyable. Charlie Tiernan, the company’s founder and president, proved himself to be a classic Irish storyteller as he recounted how he launched his business.
For CJ and many of the leaders of Tiernan’s company who were listening in, Tiernan presented a primer on how many dealers got their start and the things they had to do to get their businesses off the ground. For Tiernan, it all began in 1965 when he began selling machines and supplies out of his car for Saxon, Electro Copy, and Dennison. Like most every dealer we know, Tiernan founded NECS on a simple idea: to provide customers with the best office equipment technology and the most exceptional service in the industry.
Tiernan learned the importance of taking care of the customer from his father who owned a flower shop in Revere, Massachusetts. It wasn’t unusual to have Sunday dinner interrupted by a customer knocking on the door wanting to buy flowers. Tiernan and his dad would always get up from the table and help the customer.
In 1975, Tiernan took on Savin and the 750 (a Ricoh-manufactured liquid toner copier). He successfully rode that wave, outgrew his dealership’s original Lynn facility, and moved his operations to the current Woburn location. Shortly after that, NECS added the Canon line and has carried that company’s products for the past 30 years.
Today, NECS represents Canon, Konica Minolta, HP, and Samsung. Approximately 70% of the company’s $30 million in annual revenues comes from the sale of Canon products. MPS represents 10% of revenues, while another 15% comes from production print. Tiernan reported that the most lucrative markets for production print are the CRD and copy centers within large corporations.
NECS is committed to providing total solutions for its customers. Those solutions begin with document management and extend into cloud storage and mobile printing. Papercut and Canon’s Uniflow represent the dealership’s two most prominent solutions offerings.
Offering a full array of products and services for customers, NECS claims to be the largest privately held office technology dealer in New England with 110 employees in seven locations, including Woburn, Boston, Canton, and Springfield, Massachusetts; Manchester, New Hampshire; Warwick, Rhode Island; and Windsor, Connecticut.
For Tiernan, the keys to success are simple””money and good partners. In Tiernan’s view, good partners offer a steady stream of products that leverage the latest technology, while on the financial side, he advocates maintaining a tight fiscal policy in order to have resources to invest in expansion.
In listening to Tiernan, I harkened back to being DSM, calling on dealers and witnessing the struggles they encountered to build their respective businesses. I’m grateful CJ had the opportunity to listen to a seasoned dealer and gain an even better understanding of how the successful independent dealer is a true entrepreneur.
Tiernan truly is one of those entrepreneurs, having started small and taking years to build the business. While maintaining a tight focus on his customers, Tiernan also acutely recognized that profitability was the key to success. As we are all well aware today, capital is necessary to invest and if dealers continually borrow to make those investments, it places undue pressure on the business.
Before we left Tiernan and team at NECS, we shared that CJ and I, along with Scott Cullen, would be traveling to Japan in May to visit with the dealership’s major suppliers. We asked Tiernan for his suggestions on what we should share with these companies and about how they can improve their dealer business.
Without hesitation, Tiernan said, “Get rid of their branches.”
He then quickly added a few other items: making apps easier and less expensive to use, assisting dealers in recruiting and hiring sales people, allowing the dealer to lead in state contracts, and treating the dealers fairly. All fair points from our point of view.
This piece concludes our 2017 dealer tour coverage for the year. Additional 2017 tour stops will be covered in early 2018 as we simultaneously launch a new leg. It is an understatement to say that CJ and I have enjoyed every stop to date. In 2018, look forward to hearing from Scott and CJ, as they kick off next year’s dealer tour with a visit to Pacific Office Automation in Portland, Oregon, in January with more to be confirmed.
As a Samsung dealer, NECS features Samsung digital signage.
