Future Displays: How TSI Touch Quietly Built Up To Now Handle 70% Of The US Digital Signage Touch Market

January 21, 2025 by Dave Haynes

This is a reworked summary of a profile story from the new Sixteen:Nine Future Displays report – a free download available to all readers. You can find the information and download page here …

TSI Touch was one of six companies that kindly stepped up to sponsor the report – the sponsor dollars covering off a lot of travel costs and a bunch of time to pull the nearly 250-page beast together..

In an age of successful tech companies operating out of flashy digs and spending big on social media, TSI Touch looks JUST a bit different. Operating out of a weathered warehouse in the hills outside of Uniontown, Pennsylvania, the touchscreen solutions provider has quietly grown from humble beginnings — where dragonflies once buzzed through open windows — to becoming the main U.S. player in the digital signage side of the interactive display market.

“We always say, if we’re not designing a couple of things every week, we’re failing … because we need to keep everything fresh,” says John Przybylinski (JP), TSI Touch’s president.

That mindset of constant innovation has driven the company’s transformation from a scratchy little start-up into a still small but nimble 55 person crew that handles roughly 70% of the digital signage touch market.

Along with technical chops, one of the big differences with a lot of tech companies is culture. Their Uniontown facility has a clean room and weird machine that takes the endless supply of styrofoam packing material and reduces it to what looks like extruded pool noodles. But it also has a down-to-earth, small-town vibe that includes a giant charcoal smoker and picnic tables outside the main entry.

TSI has an Employee Stock Ownership Program and an open vacation policy built on trust. Some production team members are former youth baseball players coached by Przybylinski in Uniontown. This family-like atmosphere extends to their trade show presence, where their booths feel more like casual hangout spots than high-pressure sales environments. If I need a restorative beer after wandering shows like InfoComm, I go find the TSI stand … which will reliably have a tub of Bud Lights.

Przybylinski says success owes in part to filling a market gap. Major display manufacturers have largely abandoned the touch screen business due to its niche nature. “Between them all,” Przybylinski explains, “it’s just not a big enough venture for them to say, ‘Let’s invest a lot of money in this.’ But … it is big enough for us.”

This positioning has turned potential competitors into partners. Display manufacturers now direct interactive opportunities to TSI, keeping their panels in the game while letting TSI handle the specialized touch integration. The company completed over 400 new designs in the past year alone, ranging from simple modifications to entirely new solutions.

Even COVID-19, which initially threatened to devastate the touch screen industry, ultimately drove growth. While people initially avoided touching public surfaces, the pandemic’s staffing shortages and social distancing requirements accelerated the adoption of self-service kiosks and interactive displays.

They’ve also done well by paying attention to needs and worries. “Our customer service department is just ridiculously good, because they not only know touch, but they also know about how to fix monitors, players, software… because that’s what we do,” says Przybylinski. Comprehensive knowledge helps them diagnose issues quickly, even when touch technology isn’t the root cause.

Despite emerging technologies like gesture interfaces and voice control, Przybylinski says touch has staying power: “As long as people have a phone that they’re touching, touch is going to be around.”

You can download the full story, part of a nearly 250 page report on Future Display tech here, off of this page. It is totally free. No strings other than a very short form to get a sense of who is downloading, and how many.