...continued Phone Masters makes clear connection with clientele

herself brewing coffee and a steady stream of technicians arriving in their pick-up trucks, departing in Phone Masters vans, headed to their appointed installation sites.
   Born in North Dakota, Barbra Davis was brought to the Midwest by more than business opportunity. Love lured her. Davis met her husband, Jeff, in 1989 while living in Florida and followed him
   Why is a woman president of a company with so many burly guys who install phone lines and systems?
   Jeff Davis' father, Ed, founded Phone Masters Limited in 1986. The elder Davis had gained years of experience at Illinois Bell. When the Bell companies were split up, Ed Davis started his own business.
   "He opened a store on Ferguson Avenue here in Wood River that sold phones," Barbra Davis said. "Do you remember when the Bell companies rented phones? That was a good business. Ma Bell would rent phones to people for $3 a month for 100 years."
   Ed Davis and his wife, Lois, started to sell simple phones.
   "You remember the Princess phones, Mickey Mouse phones and race car phones?" Barbra Davis said. "Ed became an Illinois Bell authorized distributor, and people began to ask him to sell them and install business phone systems. That was the beginning of Phone Masters."
   After Barbra and Jeff married, the future Phone Masters owner began making sales for the business.

   "Ed, Jeff, and his brother, Terry, really took me under their wings," she said. "After I had done sales, they then asked me to become more active in management."
   Phone Masters' annual sales have grown from $1 million in 1990 to more than $4 million in 2001. Today Davis manages 32 people, including 17 technicians.
   "Do you remember the phones with lighted buttons and big, fat cables?" Barbra Davis said. "Well, as technology has changed, so has our business."
   According to Davis, 40 percent of sales come from the fact that Phone Masters is an authorized SBC Ameritech and SBC Southwestern Bell distributor. Another 40 percent of sales come from installing cable and phone systems and service. The remaining 20 percent of sales derive from selling cell phones, pagers and alarms.
   "Our ideal project is one in which we lay the cable, sell and install the phone system, and do the data cabling," Davis said. "In the future, we see voice and data converging onto one platform, meaning that the phone system and computer system will run off the same server."
   Davis believes that Phone Masters is better than its competition.
   "I say that for two reasons," she said. "First, we haven't lost our focus. We're not looking to sell and we are happy being a small business. Second, our employees are great. Our people stay with us. We are steady."

staff writer: Kurt Prenzler
email: kprenzler@ibjonline.com

 
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