Demo Systems Thriving Under the Guiding Light of Tecstar

Often, when a large company buys a smaller one, the latter is never seen again.

That has not been the case with Moorpark-based Demo Systems, purchased in April by the Tecstar corporation, a $120-million-a-year solar cell manufacturer in the City of Industry.

Far from disappearing, the privately held Ventura County avionics firm is bursting at the seams.

Demo Systems, now a division of Tecstar, manufactures data systems for commercial and military aircraft. The equipment is used for transmitting maintenance plans, mission plans and other flight information to and from aircraft personnel and ground crews.

The technology also is used for transferring data for in-flight entertainment and satellite weather transmission.

To accommodate an expansion of its product line and to better house its 48 employees, Demo Systems will relocate this week from a 10,000-square-foot facility on Tech Circle in Moorpark to a 26,000-square-foot site on Science Drive.

“For the next generation of data transfer systems, we’re going to need a lot more space,” said Darby Shields, former president and now general manager and vice president of Demo Systems. “Everybody is sitting in meeting rooms, hallways, the cafeteria.”

The new home office is part of a 41,476-square-foot industrial building being constructed by West America Construction Corp. of Beverly Hills. Demo Systems signed a five-year lease and has an option on the remaining portion of the property.

Daum Commercial Real Estate Services of Camarillo represented both Demo Systems and property lessor Moorpark Science Drive LLC.

“Demo Systems was a small company purchased by a larger company that was mainly oriented around space power systems, power cells, panels,” Shields said.

Tecstar solar cell systems powered the recent Mars Pathfinder mission. The company has been in existence since 1954, originally under the name Hoffman Electronics Corp., and as early as 1958 provided the solar cells to power the Vanguard I satellite.

“With the Mars [mission], what used to be a boutique industry has now gone mainstream-- [Tecstar is] doing very well because satellites have grown so big,” Shields said. “[Tecstar] started reusing proceeds to purchase other companies to become a full aerospace company themselves.

“Tecstar didn’t want to assimilate us so much as provide us with the capital to go forward into the next generation of products,” Shields said. “Their plan is to keep our group independent.”

Demo Systems products are used on the Boeing 777 and will be incorporated into other Boeing aircraft. The company has formed an alliance with Honeywell on some of its projects.

Shields said Demo Systems maintenance data products can be a cost-efficient way of doing business for commercial airlines.

“Why do they want these things? Because they can mean decreased turn-around time finding [mechanical] faults on a plane,” Shields said.

“Commercial airlines lose somewhere between $600 and $1,000 a minute when planes are delayed, and if they have a problem where they have to tow a plane away, it’s tens of thousands of dollars,” he said. “If you have a wiring diagram right there at the plane, you can fix it on an airfield in half an hour, saving tens of thousands.”