October 20, 2017
As we mentioned in our press release today, we are super excited to share that we have recently finalized the process to be acquired by Intentional Systems Inc. This is a huge milestone in our company’s growth and one that we are extremely excited about!

Over the last number of years, we realized that to truly continue our trajectory we would need a growing set of internal and external support mechanisms to help us realize our goals:  support in the form of new skill sets, new investment ideas, new business model ideas, and more.  Generally speaking, we feel like more people helping us grow is definitely better than less.

About six months ago we started to discuss with John Mertel the idea of bringing him back to the company with some other supporters in the local Seattle area.  John, as you might know, was one of the original founders of SteppIR Antenna Systems in 2001 and was a key component of our growth over the first 12 years of the company.  More recently John has spent time in another high-growth industry:  3D Printing. After a number of working sessions to align on ideas and plans, we determined the best course of action would be to join our efforts with Intentional Systems.

In a sense, this is not really a very dramatic change:  John Mertel now leads SteppIR as President and CEO.  And of course, John knows the SteppIR business, industry and customer base inside-and-out.  In a sense it is more like a “homecoming” for John and we expect no hiccups in any part of our business during this transition.  And the rest of the SteppIR team is still here and intact:  Mike Mertel will stay involved with SteppIR in an advisory capacity helping with technical innovation and product design, Jim Thomas will stay in his role as Vice President, Product Engineering, and Bart Hasz has been promoted to Business Manager, working closely with John on business operations.    

And most importantly, we expect a strong pipeline of products and services to be released over the next year which will continue the strong tradition of innovation here at SteppIR. 

All this said, the true measurement of our future success will be with you, our SteppIR customers and our community.  We expect to continue to delivery great value and great service, and – as always – if we do not for some reason live up to your expectations, we’ll do everything in our power to correct it. 

One of the most powerful parts of the ham radio community is we are in this together – we are all experiencing, communicating and sharing with each other.  And we hope to continue to be just an ongoing (if not small!) part of this in our next phase of growth.

To stay up-to-speed on all the interesting news that will come from Intentional Systems and SteppIR in the near future, sign up for our newsletter.  And as always, thank you for the support!