TSI Touch provides touch screens throughout the world from Uniontown
Editor’s note: This is one in a weekly series featuring businesses operating in Washington, Greene and Fayette counties that have national and global reach.
If you’ve ever watched someone on the TV news interact with a large touchscreen, used an interactive kiosk at a mall or hotel, or touched an interactive computer screen in a boardroom, restaurant or casino, it’s likely you’ve seen or used something made right in Fayette County.
“CNN, they were raving about our touch screen on air during the election,” said John Przybylinski, president of TSI Touch in Uniontown. The business manufactures touch screens and protective solutions for commercial-grade displays and video walls the world over.
While TSI Touch was launched in 2011, its origin was seeded a decade earlier at Trident Systems, a government-contracted company that delivered technology solutions for government and commercial needs.
Przybylinski said about 5% of Trident Systems’ business was a division known as Trident Systems Commercial Products Group (CPG), which specialized in touch screen technology.
That’s where he worked, so when the company decided to pull out of the touch screen market, Przybylinski said that a vice president at Trident, Gary Mundrake, told him he planned to take it over. He wanted Przybylinski with him to launch the newly-named TSI Touch.
“There were four of us in 2011,” Przybylinski said.
TSI’s first year of revenue was around $1.6 million, he said, but they were able to land Verizon as a client, prompting quick growth and more local jobs.
“And then, from year to year, we had 40% growth and now we’re up $34 million in revenue last year and 57 employees,” he said.
Earlier this year, Mundrake handed over the role of company president to Przybylinski, and became TSI’s chief technology officer.
While today’s teenagers probably can’t remember a time when touch screens weren’t a part of daily life, their parents may be surprised to know that the technology predates some of them, too.
Przybylinski said in 1979, a lot of government agencies used touch screen technology in simulators and other applications, which got got Trident involved in further developing the technology. But it was the drop of a little product in 2007 – the first generation iPhone – that really rocketed touch screens to the forefront of daily use, he said.
“When the iPhone came out, touch went nuts,” Przybylinski said.
Although Trident wasn’t involved in bringing touchscreens to the masses via the iPhone, the device “told everyone in the world it’s okay to touch something to make it work,” he said.
And that led to broader opportunities for TSI Touch.
“Well, if we can touch a phone to make it work, why can’t we touch a kiosk to order a burger? Why can’t we touch a kiosk to order our plane ticket? Why can’t we touch a kiosk in the mall to find what store we want to go to?” he asked.
Przybylinski said touch technology grew from phones to tablets to televisions, and finally to things like video walls, which TSI Touch makes. He said the company can manufacture a 500-inch touch-screen wall, though the most popular sizes range from 49 to 65 inches.
Among the company’s customers are many readily recognizable names, including Carnival, Tesla, Cinnabon, Moe’s Southwest Grill, AT&T, Sprint, Mall of America, Honda, and Auntie Anne’s. Przybylinski credits old-fashioned customer service for TSI’s ability to build and maintain a base of such heavy hitters.
“We do what we say we’re going to do, we tell the truth, we meet and exceed expectations of our customers and partners,” Przybylinski said, noting the company will go the extra mile to help its customers, even with issues that aren’t related to TSI Touch products. “We’re just a small component in the entire set up. We’re not the player, not the content, not the installer, we’re the touch screen.”
Last year, the company shipped out 16,000 products, with carrier trucks in and out at their facility about 10 times a day, delivering monitors to be manufactured into touch screens and picking up finished products.
“Carriers love us,” Przybylinski said.
TSI Touch customers include hotels, retail spaces, airports and even schools like West Virginia University, which Przybylinski said is one of the largest universities for digital signage. WVU uses all TSI Touch products, he said.
The company also believes in reaching out to young people in the area, said Tifanie Tiberio, director of marketing with TSI Touch.
For the last four years, they’ve invited students from local schools to tour the facility and create a video showcasing what they learned about the Uniontown-based company.
“It sets an example for young people that manufacturing is a career path for them and if they want to stay local. It’s also a local career path,” Tiberio said.