When starting a technology company, it’s vital to have a good team, a good plan and a good grasp of where the technology is likely to grow and develop.
Pulling those elements together maximizes the company’s chances for success and also positions it to take advantage of that most unpredictable opportunity a business can encounter: serendipity.
That blending of talent, planning and auspicious timing forms much of the basis for the growth of one of Greenville’s most celebrated home-grown success stories, ScanSource, now celebrating its 30th year.
Rocketing growth
When Mike Baur and Steve Owings founded ScanSource in December 1992 with a small team and big plans, they had little notion what was in store.
“We had no idea the company would get this big,” Baur says.
Bar-code scanning was just starting to take off, and the company was founded to take advantage of the trend and dedicated itself to equipping companies with the technology needed to make widespread use of bar-code scanning.
Baur says the company grew so rapidly it was able to go public just a year after its founding.
“Really, that put us on the map,” he says. “It allowed us to have the capital we needed to grow rapidly, and at the same time stay in Greenville, South Carolina, which is really kind of cool.”
At that point the company had grown to about 45 employees and was honing its skills at getting scanning technology to the companies using bar codes, from grocery stores such as Bi-Lo and other retailers, to restaurants, warehouses and hospitals.
Becoming a trusted technology supplier to thousands of companies nationally and globally opened doors to new opportunities as the company grew. Spinoffs from the breakup of AT&T enabled ScanSource to expand into telecommunications, and that in turn paved the way to get into security cameras, computers and cloud networking systems.
Pandemic shift
While hardly anyone could have predicted the magnitude of workplace shifts brought on by the pandemic, few companies were as well positioned to meet the changing needs of the market as ScanSource.
“We used to have a hard time convincing a company that it needed to have a conference room with cameras in it,” Baur says. “We were selling videoconferencing before it was cool.”
“We used to have a hard time convincing a company that it needed to have a conference room with cameras in it. We were selling video conferencing before it was cool.” – Mike Baur
What was a hard sell three years ago has now become commonplace, and like thousands of companies worldwide, ScanSource has adopted a hybrid model and sells both the hardware and the software that makes the model work.
Baur says this new work environment is not only part of his company’s success but is also responsible for much of the influx of talent into the region. That talent, combined with the homegrown talent produced by area universities such as Clemson and Furman, will help drive the success of companies like ScanSource going forward, he says.
Key dates
- 1992 — ScanSource founded in Greenville
- 1994 — company becomes public in March
- 2016 — acquires California-based Intelisys, entering the telecom and cloud-services market
- 2020 — opens office location in downtown Greenville
- 2023 — celebrates 30th year and growth into Fortune 1000 company with more than 2,300 employees globally and $4 billion in annual sales
