Belkin Names Pipkin As President/CEO

By Lisa Johnston On Sep 19 2011 - 4:01am

PLAYA VISTA, CALIF. — Belkin announced that Mark Reynoso has stepped down as president and CEO.

He will be replaced by Chet Pipkin, Belkin’s founder and chairman of the board. Reynoso has also vacated his position on Belkin’s board of directors.

The company said that Pipkin is not “an interim caretaker” and will lead the company in the long term. He was president and CEO until 2010 when Reynoso, then president, was promoted.

TWICE spoke with Pipkin a few days after Belkin announced his appointment, and while he wasn’t able to comment on the circumstances regarding Reynoso’s departure, he did share his outlook for the fourth quarter and the holiday selling season.

“I am extremely excited and very enthused, and the reason that I am is the amount of opportunity in the market at the current time,” Pipkin said. “It’s overwhelmingly obvious to everyone at this point of the … opportunity [for] people to have access to data, and connectivity with their friends, and entertainment and productivity tools everywhere they are.”

“With the parallel development with the transition in the way the Internet is being used and the way we’re watching video content at work and at home, and to the evolution over to Cloud-based solutions, there is no company that is as innovative and as strong a leader both on the mobility side and on the Internet side,” he added. “This intersection is something we’ve been looking forward to for a long time.”

When asked about the fourth quarter, Belkin’s new leader was upbeat. “For us, it looks very positive just because we have happened to be in areas of growth that are growing at a very rapid rate. The rapidly changing mix over to smart and Wi-Fi-enabled TVs and devices that allow that really open up a great opportunity for us that’s fueling a lot of growth.”

He also named video-on-demand as a driving force of growth for Belkin. “Video demand on the TV and tablet and PC side also is creating a need on the part of the consumer to have a much more robust higherthroughput router, so we just fortunately are in segments of the CE space which are growing rapidly, and we’re experiencing the benefits of that. The marketplace in total is going to be pretty flat. We think the generally speaking it’s not going to be an outstanding quarter for everyone. We’re just fortunate to be in some very high-growth areas.”