Losh Communications owner sells to son

His decision to retire is the latest example of the company’s family focus.

Losh and his wife, Violet, are leaving day-to-day operations of their 17-year-old telephone equipment and services company and have sold the business to their 38-year-old son, Mark, and his wife, Bernadette. The deal closed May 14.

“We’re just going to let him take over, and he’ll pay us in installments – there’s no upfront money involved,” said Stephen Losh, 62, who declined to disclose the purchase price for the business at 1700 S. Campbell Ave. “He just won’t need to pay us a salary anymore.”

Other Losh family involvement includes Violet Losh’s sister, Barbara Lee, a Losh Communications employee since 1992, and Mark’s brother, Matt, who works part-time doing field installations. All plan to stay on with the company.

“I depend on (Losh Communications) greatly, and I’m glad to hear that Mark is taking over the company,” said Jim Winder, facility manager for Positronic Industries, which has employed Losh’s services for more than a decade. “It means I won’t be looking for someone else to provide those services.”

Winder said that Losh Communications recently completed a large upgrade of data lines at Positronic.

“We have four facilities in southern Missouri linked together – phone, voice, data and (public address) systems. They have created all of that,” Winder said. “They put in new phone systems, voice-mail systems, paging systems and a lot of creative use of phone lines for multiple uses.”

Multiple communication lines are key to Losh’s business these days and reflect the evolving telecommunications industry, which is dealing with issues ranging from the increased use of computers for communication to movement away from landline phones toward cellular services.

Telecommunications research firm In-Stat, for example, estimated in January that subscriber numbers for Internet-based multimedia communication services will hit 500 million by 2011, up from 10 million this year. The most popular of those services is Voice-over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, which converts voices to digital signals carried by Internet to the recipient.

“Computers and telephones are becoming the same thing,” Mark Losh said. “Voice-over Internet Protocol is something everyone is hearing about – that integration of your business telephone system and your local area network.”

Losh Communications began offering such data services last year, and Losh said he plans to increase advertising for the services this year. Losh added that his staff would handle the new work through attrition.

“These guys who retire from other phone companies and come here to work until they get Social Security, they’re not interested in transitioning over and being data technicians,” Losh said. “As those guys retire, we’ll be replacing them with data people.”

The company’s original line of products comprised strictly business telephone systems and service. That changed three years ago, when the company became an authorized AT&T long-distance service reseller.

Two years ago, Losh Communications relocated to a South Campbell Avenue shopping center north of Sunshine Street from 1408 S. Glenstone Ave. Losh said he’s looking for another space near his leased office.