A long-tenured Carnation-based telecom retailer has recently been named “Partner of the Year” for 2021, after a large growth in sales during the pandemic.

Business Telecom Products (BTP) received the award from Poly, formerly Plantronics, a multinational video, voice and communication company that is best known for its work with NASA.

BTP was founded in Carnation by Eric and Marilyn Torrison in 1991. It was bought by current owner Esha Vimawala in 2018. Her husband, Jimi Shah, joined the company in 2020.

“It’s a big award for us. It took 30 years for us to get,” Shah said. “We are happy that we must have done things right.”

The business, like many telecom providers, saw growth during the pandemic. An increase in remote work created a new demand for replacing traditional office phones.

BTP specializes in selling and supporting communication products, including headsets, for large businesses in the healthcare, finance and government sectors.

Their success, Shah said, was attributed to being old school, still maintaining a physical warehouse of inventory and having a small, easily-accessible team of employees in Carnation.

The company has also had an added goal of reusing products when possible, Shah said, keeping them out of landfills.

“We prevent headsets from being thrown into the garbage for no reason,” he said.