AUTHORIZED
DEALER:

RAM

Here is a story printed about our company in the Decatur Daily,
after our move from Lancaster, California to Decatur, Alabama

In her line of business there is one thing you don't do --- and that is get lost.

That's because JoAnn Cummings has found a niche in selling Global Positioning System products, gadgets that can zap a signal from your location to an orbiting government GPS satellite and back to earth. The signal will show your location on a screen, usually on a small hand-held device as small as a cellular telephone.

Two weeks ago, Mrs. Cummings opened Adventure GPS Products -- Alabama at 305 Bank Street N.E. in the Decatur Business Incubator. She sells her GPS products through an Internet catalog and walk-in business. Last week, she hired her first employee. She hopes to add two more workers as the business grows.
 

"There are different kinds of GPS products for different kinds of applications," said Mrs. Cummings, who moved to Decatur recently from Lancaster, Calif.

In the past decade, the GPS product market has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry composed of users, researchers and manufacturers.

Mrs. Cummings moved to Decatur because her husband, Chris Cummings, director of launch production for Boeing Co.'s Delta IV factory, was transferred to the Decatur plant. She has three employees at her office in California, but that office will close in the next few weeks as she moves all operations to Decatur.

While her husband has 20 years experience working with space shuttle programs, she also is an engineer and worked as a civilian on the B-2 flight test program at Edwards Air Force Base, near Los Angeles. "I knew he may be transferred someday and I needed a business that was portable," she said.

She founded her home-based business in April 1996 and sold 500 units in her first year. Her sales grew to 1,700 units in her second year and 2,500 units in her third year.

"My husband didn't think I could sell anything," she joked.

Authorized dealer

She is among 1,400 distributors and original equipment manufacturers to sell Garmin International GPS products worldwide. Garmin, a 10-year-old company in Olathe, Kan., has more than 50 products in all GPS markets, including automobile, aviation, marine, military, outdoors and cellular. "I'm not surprised she is seeing that kind of growth," said Sara Beane, a spokeswoman for Garmin, which has sales of more than $1.5 million.

Hand-held products like the StreetPilot GPS ($499.99 suggested retail price) and StreetPilot GPS Color Map ($699.99) are gaining popularity among the consumer markets. "GPS products are emerging into the consumer market and they are just now getting in the household-name world," said Ms. Beane.

In North Alabama, Mrs. Cummings will be competing with several other Garmin dealers. They are The Map Center and Time Domain Systems in Huntsville and The Decatur-Athens Aeroservice at Pryor Field, said Ms. Beane.

Mrs. Cummings also is a registered dealer of GPS products made by Magellan Corp. of Sunnyvale, Calif. and Lowrance Electronics Inc. of Tulsa, Okla.

$100 to $700 products

In her showroom, there are a variety of hand-held units that range from $100 to $700. "The lower cost units don't have the maps, but they can tell you your speed and your location," she said. The units can also mark a spot one has visited and draw a map to return to that area.

"A lot of hikers will use it to help them get back to a place that they wanted to visit again," she said.

She said 70 percent of her sales are to casual users, mostly hikers, hunters, boaters and fishing enthusiasts. The remaining 30 percent of sales are to the government, forestry services, schools and scientists.

But a lot of customers, mostly men, are buying the hand-held units for use in their car to let them know where they are at all times, said Mrs. Cummings.

"It's definitely a growing market and the trend is these hand-held receivers are the starting point in technology for what will be in most cars in 10 years," said Jim Engelhardt, assistant editor of GPS World magazine of Eugene, Ore.

He said a 1997 study showed that Garmin had 39 percent of the hand-held market, Magellan had 36 percent and Lowrance, known mostly for its sonar and fish-finding products, had 15 percent.

Like any technology, Engelhardt said that GPS hand-held products will become more of a household name as features on units improve and prices drop.

"Already in the past few years, the cost has gone down and that has opened up the market," he said.