Kevin Rodgers is the president, chief executive officer and owner of Nautel.
Kevin Rodgers, 55, is the president, chief executive officer and owner of Nautel, one of the world's largest manufacturers of radio-broadcast equipment, headquartered in Hackett's Cove, N.S.
I'm like a lot of Maritimers – we don't talk about ourselves very well. My grandfather and father are from Heart's Content (Nfld.). We can only go back three generations; I'm not sure where they came from. I grew up in Saint John and graduated with a B.Sc. from the University of New Brunswick in 1985. I was working at a radio station part-time while I was going to university and the chief engineer suggested I look into this company in Nova Scotia that made radio transmitters. I did, applied and that was it.
I spent my career involved in the customer-service side of the business. Moving from the director of customer service into the CEO role certainly allows me to keep a focus on that important side of the business. I've been with the company 32 years, so it's a consistent management and style. I'd been a minor shareholder for many, many years and was on the board of directors; the founders were bought out in 2011 and now I'm the sole shareholder.
We've been in Hackett's Cove since 1969 and now have more than 15,000 transmitters in 177 countries. We've trained people from all over the world here – most times that training involves a lobster dinner. We also have many webinars throughout a year; one of our most popular – around the world – is "How Not to Blow Stuff Up."
We acquired a company in Cornwall (Ont.) three years ago as an area for diversification allowing us to have some synergies with our sonar amplifier – a new product – we're developing here in Hackett's Cove. We also have a manufacturing operation in Bangor (Me.) that makes many of the same products we manufacture here. In total, we have 240 staff, 50 people in the engineering department.
We're always developing the next-generation traditional broadcasting product, but what's really cool and interesting is we're looking at diversifying, for other uses, high-power radio-frequency amplifiers. That's what a radio transmitter is; HD radio is a term mostly used in the United States, it's not used in Canada so much.
We're looking at other ways to use technology for other applications, why we're looking at a sonar amplifier. VLF (very low frequency) is another opportunity we're looking at, also some industrial heating applications.
In 48 years, we've never discontinued support for a product – that's one of our competitive advantages and it becomes very challenging, but we'll always try to help the customer. We will find someone to help, although they are getting fewer and fewer – it's been me sometimes, but sometimes we find people to help who've moved into our sales group who started out in engineering.
When we're choosing components, we obviously try to pick things that are the latest technology so they have a long run and lifetime, just the opposite of built-in obsolescence. The products we make have a 15 to 20 year expected life cycle so it's very important. It's more and more difficult because a transmitter today is different from one 10 years ago. A transmitter 10 years ago didn't have a computer in it but a transmitter today has a computer in it, so those components are some limiting factors and challenges in how long a product is viable.
I was always a car guy. Bricklins were made in Saint John in 1974-75 while I was growing up and I remembered them. I now have two. I bought the first one as a hobby, something to restore and do with my son as he was growing up. The cars are a total distraction. You can go into the garage on a Saturday and just put everything else aside for a few hours and accomplish something. I subsequently bought a second Bricklin and a 1970 E-Type Jaguar. My daily drive is a Tesla – I had it shipped in from Montreal.
I wouldn't put travel high on the list of fun things I do, because I travel so much for work. I don't know what I would do if I wasn't doing what I'm doing. I'm doing exactly what I want to do. I – absolutely – can't imagine doing anything else.