Augat Excels by Making the Right Connections : Electronics: The company’s Kent, Wash., division is booming with a line of products that link telecommunications lines around the world.

If you have cable television, chances are you’re watching something helped along by Augat.

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Or if you’ve made a long distance telephone call, an Augat product might have helped that happen too.

Although not a household name among consumers, Augat is an increasingly big name in connectivity products for the telecommunications industry. Augat makes products that help link and boost communication lines around the world.

The Kent-based Communications Products division of the Massachusetts-based firm is a big reason for that. The division has seen sales grow 40% a year for the last three years, said Vice President and General Manager Larry Buffington.

Augat has 500 employees in Kent, filling their 56,000-square-foot manufacturing facility to the point where they have acquired a second lease nearby and will move some work there. The company hopes to use this Pacific Rim location as a jumping off point to Asian markets.

“We have gotten very aggressive on our product line and business strategy,” Buffington said. “We were a distant No. 2 in our connector business and now we’re nose to nose with No. 1,” Gilbert Corp.

Augat is a $530-million company that provides connectivity products to the automotive, telecommunications and data processing industries. In telecommunications, that means items such as connectors that allow cable television companies to match up high-volume, fiber-optic lines to the low-volume coaxial cables that still carry individual signals to consumers’ homes.

Augat’s Kent employees also do sales and research and development in addition to manufacturing. Other Kent products include equipment that allows telephone companies to easily switch and connect lines, and amplifiers that boost cable TV signals along the way.

The amplifiers aren’t what you find in your stereo; they’re distinctly industrial, small and heavy duty. “They’re usually either hanging from something or buried in the ground,” Buffington said, so they take a beating.

The Kent plant includes a terror room for testing those amps; its temperature can be lowered to minus-40 degrees or raised to 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

Augat came to Seattle with the acquisition of Telzon, a telecommunications hardware supplier, in the 1980s. Telzon’s general manager then was Ron Tarrant, now CEO of Flow International.

Flow’s Spider Staging division occupies the rest of the building where Augat now is located. “When we leased this building, we didn’t think we’d need the space,” Buffington said. “We’d like to have it now.”

Augat is once again in an acquisitive mode, recently snapping up Elastometric Technologies, a Pennsylvania-based connectivity products builder, and Vancouver, British Columbia-based Photon Systems Corp., a provider of fiber optic communications systems. Buffington said the company is eyeing prospects that can help Augat gain market share, increase its technology and broaden its product line “within our market focus.”

Buffington said the Photon acquisition was a friendly affair and Photon’s management has stayed on.

“They saw they had an opportunity to grow but they didn’t have the financing to do it,” Buffington said. “We’re already landing business through them.”

Acquisitions are a tricky business, Buffington said. “You usually aren’t going to find a bargain. You can pick a partner that’s a very successful business that you’re going to have to pay for,” he said. “But you usually make more money in the end.

“Acquisitions can be quick fixes but they’re no panacea,” Buffington said. Investments frequently must be made, in management, capital equipment or product development.

But he doesn’t think Augat is growing faster than it can accommodate. “We have good people here,” Buffington said. “It’s not just a head count issue. It’s management and engineering and technicians. We’re always pushed on our business in keeping up with the human factors.”

That makes the Seattle area a prime location, said Buffington, an Issaquah resident.

“It’s easy to recruit people to Seattle,” he said. “They tend not to leave.”