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Blue Springs,
Kansas City MO
158
TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine
— 04-05/2012
— www.TELE-satellite.com
Satellite Dealer Ricks Satellite, Kansas City, USA
COMPANY REPORT
Married Couple
Builds an Online
Satellite Shop
Exactly 10 years have passed since Rick
Caylor started Ricks Satellite together
with his wife Bobbie. It’s a small compa-
ny, a “Mom and Pop shop” as Rick puts it.
We paid them a visit at their home in Blue
Springs, Missouri, a suburb of Kansas
City. And it’s from here that they oper-
ate their online shop for satellite products
with emphasis on AZBox receivers.
Rick Caylor himself is quite the satel-
lite enthusiast. “I set up my first satel-
lite system in December of 1984; it was
a 2.8-meter C-band dish”, remembers
Rick. “I still remember my old Kenwood
receiver with its tuning knob; you could
use it to quickly scan all 24 analog chan-
nels.” Rick has been fascinated with sat-
ellite reception ever since. Back then his
“real” job was as a manager at an auto
parts company; satellite reception was
his hobby in the evenings.
But he was interested in all those new
receivers that kept coming out. “Some-
time in the mid 1990’s I started working
for a satellite installer but I didn’t get paid
in money, instead I got paid in receivers!”
We would like to point out to our younger
TELE-satellite readers that in those days
satellite receivers still
came with hefty price
tags; it was an ex-
penditure that you re-
ally had to think about.
It was a good decision
working for those re-
ceivers. “At some point
I amassed a collection of
about 50 receivers and I
was very familiar with each
and every one of them since
I fully tested them all.” Today
Rick has shown that his enthusi-
asm back then was a treasure trove of
experience; the operation of all of the re-
ceivers was intuitively easy.
Then one day coincidence came to his
aid: his employer, the auto parts com-
pany, reorganized and offered Rick a po-
sition that didn’t appeal to him. Instead,
he decided to go out on his own. His wife
Bobbie supported him and said, “You have
to do what you really like to do.” She was
right. In 2002 Rick and Bobbie started the
company Ricks Satellite. “It wasn’t easy
in the beginning”, says Rick, “My wife had
to have a second job on the side.”