When the owners of Channel Technologies wanted to close its struggling sonar-design division, Robert Tarini Sr., then the general manager, begged them to reconsider. He explained the company just needed some tender loving care and a more positive attitude. He told them it would be wrong to leave the 12 employees unemployed. And he told them the 34-year-old division that started as Ocean Data Equipment Corp. had potential.
The owners didn’t buy it.
So Tarini, undeterred, agreed to purchase the division outright and personally financed it for four months while the two sides worked out the details. When Tarini finally signed on the dotted line, he renamed the company SyQwest and promised himself he would rebuild the company that had languished as an ignored division in a larger company.
“I saw the potential if it was addressed properly,” Tarini said. “That didn’t mean it was a slam dunk.”
That was 2003. Seven years later Tarini has grown the business from a sleepy designer of sonar equipment with about $2 million in annual sales to a company with a worldwide market presence and annual sales approaching $8 million. The company provides advanced sonar equipment to ocean researchers, the U.S. Navy and companies exploring the seabed for the likes of natural gas and oil. But it has mostly found a niche supplying smaller companies in need of surveying what lies underneath bodies of water or rivers.
“We sell the … kind of product that is much more affordable to people who need it and once they get it they don’t need a PhD to use it,” Tarini said.
The company designs most of the components, undertakes the final assembly and writes the software to interpret the data. Most of the products the company sells weigh just a few pounds and can be carried easily with one hand. That’s a far cry from the early 20th century, when sonar systems stood 6 feet high and engineers joked management set prices by the pound.
Tarini, an engineer by training, said modern sonar technology is similar to the technology found in every cell phone in the world. Just like a cell phone, sonar must detect sound waves, encode them in a way that a computer can understand and then translate the signal into meaningful data. SyQwest’s equipment utilizes that basic principle in systems that can work in as little as 3 feet of water and up to 6.2 miles. Since the average depth of the ocean is only about 2.6 miles, SyQwest’s equipment can survey most of the world’s seabed.
Tarini said twin submarine maintenance contracts, awarded by the Naval Undersea Warfare Center at Naval Station Newport, helped double his sales during the past 18 months during a time when many businesses have been struggling in a down economy.
SyQwest has also seen growth from overseas markets where developing countries are undertaking massive infrastructure projects that require knowing what lies beneath the sea, lake or river. Unlike contractors in the United States who already own the surveying sonar equipment, contractors in developing countries are looking to purchase it for the first time.
Companies on the hunt for the next undersea oil deposit also mean business for SyQwest and many of those companies, like Exxon Mobil Corp., have deep pockets even during a recession.
“People who buy our products are looking to make money off our products,” Tarini said.
Tarini’s family is invested in the company’s success. His two sons, Andrew and Robert Jr., work in sales at the company. Tarini expects his daughter Nellie, now attending college, will someday join the company. Back when his sons joined the company in 2008, SyQwest really experienced its rebirth, Tarini said.
Before that, Tarini Sr. had been focused on taking two companies public and growth at SyQwest remained stagnant. Once those companies had been taken public, Tarini returned his focus to SyQwest.
“I realized I better fix this because I’ve got two kids involved,” Tarini said with a laugh. •
COMPANY PROFILE
SyQwest
OWNER: Robert Tarini Sr.
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Sonar equipment design and repair
LOCATION: 222 Metro Center Blvd.,
Warwick
EMPLOYEES: 22
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1969 (as Ocean Data Equipment Corp.)
ANNUAL SALES: $8 million
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