Telect Inc., the Liberty Lake-based developer and manufacturer of communications networking equipment, plans to celebrate its upcoming 30th anniversary by connecting with current and potential new customers in an unorthodox way.

Two of the company's top executives, backed by a support crew, will leave here July 31 aboard Harley-Davidson motorcycles on an 11,000-mile ride to thank customers face to face for their past business, to display new products, to strengthen relationships, and to gather feedback for improving Telect's offerings.

President and CEO Wayne Williams and Executive Vice President and CFO Stan Hilbert, accompanied for all or portions of the trip by a couple of other riders, are scheduled to visit 30 cities in 21 states, from Massachusetts and Georgia to Texas and California, over about 50 days. They plan to provide daily updates on their journey through social media outlets, videos on YouTube, and reports posted on a specially created Web page at www.ridewithtelect.com.

Williams, an avid motorcyclist, acknowledges that the ride is an offbeat way for Telect to promote itself, but says he's excited about it.

"For me, it's the way I think. It's in my DNA," he says.

Telect has had to be entrepreneurial and take risks to survive in a rapidly transforming telecommunications industry since his father, Bill Williams, founded the company on Sept. 13, 1982, and the ride in some respects symbolizes that risk-tolerant mindset, he says. Similarly, riding a motorcycle well requires cautious confidence, and that same trait is important to being successful in business, he asserts.

"Getting out in front of customers is where it all starts," and the motorcycle trip gives the Telect executives a fun way to do that.

Williams says he regards the trip, during which he will meet with perhaps hundreds of clients and vendors, as a far more effective method for the company to promote itself and its products than through a trade show, which can involve a lot of wasted time and minimal benefit.

Hilbert says, "It's going to be pretty doggone powerful. I think it's going to have a dynamic impact on our customer base. It's going to stand out."

As of last week, Telect had scheduled breakfast gatherings in about 20 of the cities that the motorcyclists will pass through, and probably seven or eight Telect employees who aren't participating in the ride will be on hand at each of those locations to assist with the events, Williams says. Some barbecue gatherings also are planned, including one in Plano, Texas, where the company operates a manufacturing facility and will use the opportunity to offer tours of the plant, he says.

The cities that the Telect group will pass through will put it in close proximity to probably about 1,500 of its customers, and hopefully many of them will send representatives to one of its events, Williams says. Some meetings, though, also will take place at customers' business locations, he says.

Along with Williams and Hilbert, motorcycle riders will include two personal friends of theirs, residential contractor Kevin Cook and Columbia Bank executive Randy Casto, plus Clate Williams, Telect's facilities supervisor, who is not related to Wayne Williams.

Casto, though, will ride with the group for only about a two-week portion of the journey, and Clate Williams will spend most of his time as one of two drivers, along with his wife, Linda, of a 22-foot Roadtrek van-style motorhome that will serve as the lead vehicle for the entourage, Wayne Williams says.

The motorhome will be providing technical and mechanical support to the riders and also will be used for making presentations to customers. It has been wired heavily to meet the group's communication needs, including with a large flat-screen TV for showing company videos. In addition, it will be pulling a 12-foot trailer carrying demo products, give-away gifts, and Clate Williams' motorcycle for much of the trip.

The motorhome and the van both have been wrapped with Telect signage, including an emblem created specially to commemorate the "30-year ride."

"It's really a billboard, an 11,000-mile billboard," Williams says of the motorhome-trailer combo.

Williams says his father and his mother, Judi Williams, joined by some Telect sales representatives, made a similar trip to visit customers face to face in around 1991, covering about 6,000 miles over six weeks, but they were traveling by car.

Williams has integrated his love for motorcycling and his responsibilities as a CEO once before, emphasizing a point by riding his motorcycle into a large Liberty Lake building that Telect formerly occupied, for a management strategy meeting with about 40 people.

He says he got the idea for the 30-year anniversary, cross-country motorcycle tour a couple of years ago while on a ride with Hilbert.

As for how Telect has been performing lately, Williams says, "Overall, we're doing well."

The company was seeing an upswing in revenues in the first quarter, but they slumped a bit in the last quarter, trending 5 percent to 7 percent below projections, he says, citing continuing economic unease globally.

It recently opened a new operational development center in the Valley that it said it will use to test new products and release them rapidly, rather than distributing them the company's manufacturing plants in Texas and Mexico. Through the center, it said it also will look for ways to adapt its current product lines for broader markets.

Telect said it also is planning strategic product releases this year to serve the telecom, data-center, and home-market segments.

It employs about 80 people at its Liberty Lake headquarters at 23321 E. Knox, just south of Interstate 90, and about 450 people overall.