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TSOC reflects on 40 years of success

The success and longevity of Transglobal Systems of Canada (TSOC) is due to a combination of factors, says company president Imran Hasan: an ideal blend of skillsets from the family members who own the business and the ability to adjust to technology trends while still staying true to the company’s vision.

Mississauga, Ont.-based TSOC turned 40 this year — a significant milestone, especially for a company in the networking infrastructure and communications business. “So much has happened over the last four decades. We’ve been fortunate to be a part of that journey,” says Hasan.

Hasan immigrated to Canada from Pakistan with his parents and brother in 1973. His father, M.H. Barni, “risked everything to come to Canada and wanted the best for his next generation,” says Hasan. The family settled in Ontario, with Barni working as a mechanical engineer at the University of Waterloo, then the Ministry of Health in Oshawa.

Seeing opportunities in the telephony market, Barni established TSOC “basically from the trunk of his car,” says Hasan. As the company grew, it moved into the family’s basement, then when it got too large for the house, into a warehouse space in Mississauga.

TSOC purchased its own building in Mississauga, with offices and inventory space, in 1993, and eventually acquired the building next door. “That was about the time that the telephone companies were decentralizing, so it was an opportunity to supply these small companies and the independent telephone companies across Canada,” says Hasan.

Hasan worked at the company warehouse part-time doing shipping and receiving while attending high school. He eventually moved into sales and customer service, “then one day putting on a suit and knocking on doors and meeting people.”

Hasan says his father entrusted him with a lot of responsibility at a very young age. He remembers travelling to Hong Kong for business at age 21 and had to convince the driver picking him up at the airport that he was actually old enough to represent the company.

But the hubris of youth served him well. With plenty of exposure to the business as a teenager, he felt ready to step into management as a young man. He says wasn’t fazed by the scope of his role and leaned on his people skills to foster relationships with manufacturing partners.

“Over time, we were able to prove to each other that we can work together. We’re cultures apart, we’re generations apart, but at the end of the day, we understand the speed of business,” says Hasan.

Hasan says he learned a few tough lessons along the way, including the best way to manage inventory and credit in the event that a reseller partner was late paying their bills. He also says he was lucky to meet the right advocates and advisors, including a bank manager who dispensed some sage financial advice.

“You might be a good generalist and you might be able to specialize in one thing — maybe my one thing is building relationships with people — but when it comes to other aspects of a business, you need people who can guide you and help you navigate through those uncertain and challenging times,” says Hasan.

Hasan’s brother Norm, who is a year-and-a-half younger, joined the company full-time after attending university.

At this point, in the mid-90s, the communications and networking world was changing as the internet was in its ascendancy. On Norm’s suggestion, TSOC was registered as a domain name in 1996.

“We saw that whole convergence of voice, video, data and security all being transmitted through one medium,” says Hasan. “I just think we were at the right place at the right time when we started to see the changes.”

A crucial strategy for TSOC has been the ability to embrace the new while not throwing out the old. The company stocks a broad mix of modern cabling products and adapters but also keeps legacy equipment like telephone handset cords in inventory.

“There’s thousands and thousands of customers out there who still have phones, whether it’s a hospital or a hotel, and they need to replace the cords,” says Hasan, adding that stocking a variety of different products also allows them to be a single-source supplier to a variety of customers.

“We’re finding a resurgence in legacy products,” says his younger brother Norm. “People can’t find the products.”

Forty years on, TSOC is an efficient but flexible operation, which has been key to its ability to survive through multiple economic recessions and a pandemic. The ideal combination of the family’s skills — technology, operations and relationship-building — has also helped the business grow over the decades.

Hasan says his father, at age 85, is still involved in TSOC, and the brothers look to his technical expertise, which was the initial spark for the business in the first place. “Necessity is the mother of invention, and that’s dad in a nutshell,” says Hasan.

His father is also a model of how to continue to work through all phases of life, he adds. “You don’t have to retire, you can keep doing it at a different pace.”

The next chapter of TSOC is unwritten, with a new generation of Hasan children also working part-time in the business. As technology trends come and go, Hasan is confident that the network infrastructure business will continue to thrive.

“We’ll see what the future holds,” he says.