Last month’s rains caused a massive amount of problems for southern California residents and business owners but MULTI-LINK Communications Products (MLCP) was there to help. The highly respected alternative Cisco provider for businesses all over the world is headquartered in Torrance, California and wasn’t affected by the storms, but several small businesses in the La Crescenta/La Canada area were. MLCP was quick to rise to the occasion and help out local businesses that lost networking hardware equipment due to water leaks and minor flooding.

”We wanted to do everything we could to help these business owners,” explains MLCP President Eric Tanaka. “Those that had water damage have to spend a lot of money cleaning up and replacing furniture, equipment, computers… at a time like that, you really can’t afford to have your network down and be doing no business whatsoever until the insurance pays and you can replace what was lost.” MLCP assisted six small businesses in a few different ways. “For all of the businesses, we rushed new equipment to them the day they ordered. We put them on an extended financing plan so that they could get up and running again without spending any of the cash they’re going to desperately need to get them through this difficult period,” says Tanaka. MLCP also helped in other ways; offering trade-in credit on damaged equipment helped lower costs for affected business owners as well.

“Most of the equipment we accepted is damaged but not beyond repair. Because we sell networking equipment to companies all over the world, we maintain a huge surplus. Our technicians can use pieces of the damaged equipment to refurbish other components much like you would with a car,” says Kris Cox, a long-time employee at MLCP who handled the companies affected by the storms. “California has had such a hard time the past year or so. It’s important to us to do everything we can to keep small businesses afloat—no pun intended.”

Because the companies were all local, MULTI-LINK Communications Products also shipped the new hardware at no charge, and provided an installer for free. “Everyone we dealt with was grateful for any help we could give them,” explains Tanaka. “Most of our new customers come to us in a crisis situation hoping we can do something for them that the distribution chain won’t. It’s this type of personalized service that helps us grow our company to what it is today. These business owners will all be customers for life. If other companies would just realize that sometimes taking a short term loss will actually help you expand your customer base in the long term, I think more would step in and help when they can.”

And ‘long term’ is a word that MLCP takes seriously. The company is now going on its 15^th year in business. Since 1995, MULTI-LINK Communications has been a reliable supplier of network hardware and equipment from Cisco and other companies like Juniper, Foundry, and many more. The company buys used equipment for generous trade-in credit or cash, and sells both new and refurbished equipment at discount prices. Whether you need to replace a simple network cable, or upgrade to an entirely new network with higher-performing Cisco routers, start and end your search with MLCP.