DSI’s Robison on Satellite, CE & Connectivity

Distributor DSI’s Doug Robison, who lately added CEO responsibilities to his duties as president, told Dealerscope at the company’s recent selling and training tradeshow near its Dallas-based headquarters that after nearly six months since the division of its satellite and CE businesses, the results of the change were in line with expectations.

“Sales are definitely up on the CE side,” he said, “and on the DirecTV side of things, our recruiting is up; we’re getting new dealers. We’re ahead of pace for that, and achieving our goals there.” By the year’s end, he said, DSI is on target to add in the range of 400 new satellite dealers as customers.

One of the brightest spots for DSI this year is in satellite broadband, where the business it is doing with ViaSat’s Exede has grown eightfold in the January-through-May year-to-date period, Robison reported. “They recently launched a new satellite, and they have much more coverage and faster speeds, which has been really great for rural consumers who only have dial-up without access to high-speed Internet and even for those customers who have DSL connections but are too far away from the node.”