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Going It Alone
Altone's Kinder has made his way in the fast-changing
telecom landscape
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Business New Haven
1/22/2001
By: Linda G. Mele
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In 1987, with 16 years of experience in communications systems and equipment behind him, Al Kinder decided to take the plunge and open his own firm.
Today, he's considered one of the brightest stars in the industry, an authorized agent for Nextel, Samsung and other nationally known communication systems.
“We've been friends for 30 years,” says John Lotocki, owner of American Inter-Connect in Cranston, R.I. “and he taught me everything I knew back then. He really knows the mechanics of the business.”
For Kinder, it's been a long journey from the farm he grew up on in South Carolina.
“I was the youngest of seven kids,” Kinder recounts, “and in 1955 we moved from the farm into town. During the summers I was in high school I worked in Myrtle Beach and met a lot of people from the New Haven area.”
After graduation from high school in 1964, Kinder attended Claflin College in South Carolina, but left to go to work at Baxter Labs, which had opened a fabric-manufacturing facility near his hometown.
Kinder met his wife-to-be, Carolyn, when she came home from college at Christmas in 1966.
“Most of my family moved to the Philadelphia area, but after visiting I didn't like it there,” says Kinder. “I then went to New York City, but it was too big for my taste.”
So in 1967, he and a friend hopped on a bus and came to New Haven while Carolyn went to work for the U.S. Food & Drug Administration in Washington, D.C.
When he first came to Connecticut, Kinder went to work for Winchester Repeating Arms. But every weekend he hopped on a bus to Washington to visit Carolyn.
“I still remember that the bus trip cost $20.20,” Kinder recalls, “and I made quite a few trips before we got married in 1968 and she came to Connecticut to live.”
Carolyn went to work at Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Connecticut as a claims adjuster. She and Kinder had two children: Anthony, who works for the state's Department of Children & Families, and Charmion, a sophomore majoring in communications at Howard University.
Today Carolyn is an assistant principal in the New Haven school system.
The breakup of the Bell system created many new opportunities for smaller phone companies. In 1970, two entrepreneurs from Massachusetts created Intertel and began selling systems in Connecticut.
“It was an exciting time for the interconnect industry,” Kinder says, “and many companies bid for the chance to get in on it.”
Kinder says Toshiba wasn't in the interconnect business at that time, but it didn't take the Japanese conglomerate long to discover its potential.
“In the beginning, Bell wouldn't let the smaller companies hook up directly, but made them use a coupling device to protect their lines,” Kinder explains.
Kinder started selling communications systems for Intertel, which were manufactured by the Stamford-based TIE Communications, at a time when many businesses were afraid to leave “the phone company” and cast their lots with smaller services.
Intertel also decided to get into the long-distance business against MCI and Sprint. It won a lottery to serve the city of Boston, Logan Airport and a number of major Boston accounts. “The business finally got rolling around 1985,” Kinder says.
Within a year, the company had a staff of as many as 30 people, according to Kinder, and he was selling both the equipment and systems.
“In the 1970s, these systems had a shelf life of only 18 months or so because new products were being developed and introduced to the market very quickly,” Kinder says.
Today, due to technological advances, those same systems have an even shorter shelf life, so Kinder has to keep up with the latest innovations in order to be able to offer them to his clients.
By 1975, Kinder has risen through the ranks to become Intertel's director of operations for Westchester County (N.Y.), Connecticut and western Massachusetts.
“I was asked to create a service group for the First National Bank of Boston, and I also created a phone system for them at their branch in Milford,” Kinder says.
“But it didn't take long to see the company was in trouble because of TIE's financial status,” says Kinder.
Over the next few years, the companies for which Kinder worked either kept re-inventing themselves, were sold or created divisions that were spun off from the parent company.
Around 1985, the company he was working for was sold to Sarco Communications, which already owned some eight companies, including TCI in Hartford. Kinder went along as installations manager.
To explain how pressured Kinder's job was at the time, he recalls that his secretary quit the second day on the job, and he himself burned out within eight months, realizing that he had to leave.
“The day-after-day high pressure to perform, and the stress it created was exhausting,' Kinder says.
So in March 1987 he opened Altone Communications and agreed to do some subcontracting work for his former company. By the summer of 1988 he had about 100 accounts - many of which he still services today.
The first year, Kinder says, he worked out of his house developing a national network of suppliers. In 1989 he landed the Brooks Pharmacy account, which included some 50 Connecticut locations.
In Altone's early days, lack of access to credit stifled the company's growth. “Banks didn't consider us a good risk,” he says.
And over the years, as communications technology became ever more sophisticated, Kinder found himself servicing a variety of equipment and systems, some of which proved to be not especially reliable.
“The equipment we're using now is pretty reliable,” Kinder says, “and we use whatever consultants and contractors we need on a project-by-project basis.”
The interconnect industry of the new Millennium won't be anything like the industry was even five years ago. With computers, the Internet and rapidly evolving technology, the industry now encompasses equipment and service for phone systems, pagers, cell phones, digital answering systems, voice/fax mail, caller ID, auto-attendant systems, teleconferencing services, data networks and auto-dialing systems.
Also, interactive voice response systems, electronic communications systems, computerized telephone systems, programmable switching platforms, customer-contact systems, video viewing capabilities, voice and hands-free software and technology products, computer networking, automated systems integration, interactive data retrieval, custom programming, call-center interfacing, dialing equipment, multimedia messaging systems, teleconferencing systems, network-based small-business telephone systems, interactive call center products and Web-enabled contact hardware and software products.
More than ever, small companies like Kinder's need to keep abreast of what's happening in the industry and ways to take advantage of the newest technologies.
Kinder estimates his 2001 sales will be in the neighborhood of a quarter million dollars - a new benchmark for Altone, but only a milestone on the path to where he'd like to be.
“I think the potential is there for us to have our best year yet,” Kinder says, “and we'll probably be talking to venture capitalists or other funding sources to help us grow.”
Kinder now services Nextel wireless systems and other kinds of systems and equipment for accounts such as the city of New Haven, Wal-Mart and Radio Shack. Kinder also services smaller companies like Carl's Auto Parts in Hamden.
Carl's owner Allen Klein says he's worked with Kinder for 15 years.
“We bought our phone system from him and he handles problems almost immediately,” says Klein. “He'll either show up or call and talk us through whatever the problem is.”
“He's a very hard-working, honest person who's out there with the big guys trying to make a living like me,” Klein adds.
Paul Huber, president of the Continental Machinery Exchange Corp. of Bridgeport, has used Kinder's services since 1989.
“Al was very helpful setting up the phone system in our first building, and when we expanded he came back again and did our second building,” says Huber. “So I guess you could say we're happy with him. He's very knowledgeable and saved us money, too.”
“Our customer base is mostly in New Haven, Bridgeport and Fairfield,” Huber adds, “and we pride ourselves on our rapid response to problems or questions.”
Today, Kinder still handles both sales and servicing responsibilities.
“Without all the advancements in technology I couldn't do everything by myself,” Kinder says.
Kinder says he's fortunate to have been in the right place at the right time and able to seize an opportunity when it presented itself.
As for his success, he says the way he was brought up - to take pride in his work and be self-motivated - were major keystones. He also describes himself as being disciplined and responsible. “I've always had the ability to work on my own and get the job done, no matter what it took,” Kinder says. “That's a work ethic that I was taught at an early age.”
“And I've always said that it's important to show respect for a customer's property and employees,” he adds.
Lotocki isn't surprised that Kinder was chosen to receive Business New Haven's Minority Businessperson of the Year award. “Al is very dedicated and has worked hard to get where he is today,” Lotocki says.
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