The Verizon store on Lincoln Road is one of over 200 owned by an Escanaba business that started when Brian Boucher purchased a single store, Team Electronics, in 2001. (R. R. Branstrom | Daily Press)

ESCANABA – The locally-owned TEAM Wireless is an example of an Escanaba-area native successfully growing a business while maintaining small-town values.

The Verizon store at 609 N. Lincoln Rd. in Escanaba is one of over 200 locations that TEAM Wireless now operates. CEO and owner Brian Boucher first got into the business by purchasing a store called Team Electronics in 2001.

At the time, Boucher was already a business owner; he had been running a landscape business – Beavers Landscaping – since he was a teenager. But he wanted something to do in the winter, when lawn care was in the off-season, so he purchased the electronics store from the Stitchmans.

TEAM Electronics had been in Escanaba since at least 1971, perhaps as early as 1966, newspaper archives show. It was opened by Dick and Margaret Stitchman, a couple originally from Iron Mountain.

In 1982, then-owner Dick Stitchman announced a partial business name change: Great Lakes Telephone became TEAM Electronics, a name the commercial part of his store had already been using. The Daily Press reported at the time that the Stitchmans’ store had been part of the TEAM Electronics franchise for 12 years, and that TEAM Electronics had been selling audio and video products since 1946.

Posing for a photo as TEAM Wireless is named Verizon's Agent of the Year for 2025 are Brian Boucher, co-owner of TEAM Wireless; Matt Carr, Senior Vice President of Consumer Sales Operations at Verizon; Steve Bozzacco, Vice President of Indirect partnership for Verizon Consumer Group; Dan Phee, COO of TEAM Wireless; and Chad Parker, Senior Vice President of Sales at Team Wireless.

The United States Federal Communications Commission adopted the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which majorly altered the industry. “The goal of this new law is to let anyone enter any communications business — to let any communications business compete in any market against any other,” stated the FCC.

“It wasn’t until the FCC deregulation of the telecommunications industry that things really changed,” wrote Jeanne Rose of the Delta County Chamber of Commerce when announcing a new endeavor for the Stitchmans. “TEAM quickly became the largest provider of telephone system equipment in the U.P., which they dubbed Solutions.”

Solutions split from TEAM Electronics in 2001. The Stitchmans operated Solutions Telecommunication Specialists at 712 Ludington St., while Boucher took over running TEAM Electronics at 2419 Ludington St., near where the current UPS Store is.

Just before taking over the store in September 2001, Boucher and his father Jerome started Gee Papa Enterprises that August, and registered with the State of Michigan to do business under the assumed name (DBA) Team Electronics once the sale was complete. The “Gee” came from the nickname for Boucher’s mother (Jerome’s wife), whose given name was Sandy.

At the time, TEAM Electronics sold car stereos and remote starters. But in the early to mid 2000s, cell phones were becoming more popular, and TEAM Electronics was selling Alltel models. After a couple years renting the facility on the north end of Ludington Street, Boucher was ready to take the next step – finding his own building.

TEAM Electronics announced its move to 2220 6th Ave. N. in Escanaba in 2004, where they offered “a complete line of cell phones, car starters, car audio/video and home theaters and XM radio, including installation.”

Boucher also still owned his landscaping operation then. After a few more years, he sold Beaver’s Landscaping in 2010; it no longer exists.

When TEAM Electronics entered the mobile phone market selling Alltel, “We saw how much money was in phones, and… we kind of started doing the whole U.P.,” Boucher said.

He opened stores in other U.P. communities – first Menominee in 2007, followed by Sault Ste. Marie, Iron Mountain and Marquette.

In 2004, Boucher launched Beaver’s Land Management, which owns real estate to lease back to wireless stores. The name is an homage to Boucher’s first business and his past – he had called the landscaping operation “Beaver’s” because of an old nickname, shared VP of Marketing Justin Burford.

Burford has been with TEAM for 17 years; when he joined, there were only six locations. Today, after more and more acquisitions, TEAM Wireless has over 200, but rather than relocating to a larger city, Boucher keeps the corporate home base in Escanaba.

“I’m an example of a corporate career that stayed in the U.P.,” said Burford, who lives in Marquette. “I just started as a store manager and was able to grow with the company.”

When Verizon Wireless bought out Alltel Wireless in 2009, Boucher changed the name of TEAM Electronics to TEAM Wireless.

Today, TEAM Wireless sells primarily cell phones for Verizon, but they also sell wireless home internet and fiber cable for Verizon. Boucher noted that while internet is becoming a bigger part of the business, “cell phones are still the biggest portion.”

In 2015, the current Verizon store at 609 N. Lincoln Rd. opened. Prior to that, the retailer had been operating out of the same building as TEAM’s corporate office; now, that building at 2220 6th Ave. N. is solely corporate headquarters.

The business continues to grow. For a while, Boucher said, retailer agents like TEAM were not viewed by Verizon as being as valuable as the corporate-owned locations, but now that’s totally reversed.

In less than a year, the number of TEAM Wireless stores has nearly tripled.

In November 2025, Verizon went through a major divestment, converting many of its company-owned stores to franchises.

In that transition, Verizon divested about 180 stores. TEAM, which is considered a “Verizon Wireless premium retailer,” acquired about 16 of those stores.

“It’s cheaper for them to let us run them than (for Verizon) to pay employees and corporately run them,” Boucher said.

Amid concerns about rising competition, the downsizing was a necessary change, said Verizon CEO Dan Schulman, who was appointed just a month prior. “We must drive financial results that exceed current market expectations,” Schulman said in October, as reported by Reuters.

In order to be more efficient – “faster and more focused,” Schulman said in a November memo, “we will be a simpler, leaner and scrappier business.”

It worked out for TEAM; Boucher is excited to see his brand’s growth.

They gained even more locations recently, when two major companies that each had about 60 Verizon stores went up for sale. In one month’s time, TEAM – now co-owned by Chad Jensen of Indianapolis as well as Boucher – gained 120 additional doors, stated a May press release.

Wireless World was a South Dakota-based Verizon authorized retailer with 59 locations. TEAM acquired their holdings on May 1.

The second, Cellular Plus, was based in Montana. The deal to transfer their 61 stores to TEAM was due to be effective today, June 1.

Boucher said that the owners of both chose TEAM to take over their stores “because we have the exact same business culture as what they did.”

He believes the integrity and values of Escanaba-based TEAM Wireless are apparent and have helped the enterprise to grow.

“Paying your people well and having key leadership is, like, the number one key,” Boucher said. “The employees are the greatest asset. Without them, you don’t have a business.”

At the corporate office – which is now located where the TEAM Electronics store was in the late 2000s – “Some of the employees in there have been with me since day one,” Boucher said.

While a number of remote executives and VPs are based in other parts of the country, “the highest congregation of corporate employees is right (in Escanaba),” said Burford.

He estimated that there about 50 careers that TEAM Wireless supplies in Delta County – some employees work at the retail storefront, but the corporate office is the workplace of “three VPs, three officers of the company; the majority of the human resource employees work out of there; our inventory control management works out of there for the entire footprint,” Burford explained. “There’s no other regional corporate offices or anything at this time, so the only corporate corporate offices are there in Delta County, and … the other 218 locations are just retail storefronts.”

Verizon recognized TEAM Wireless in 2025 as being the “Agent of the Year” for mid-major size agents.

To thank the community that raised him and serves as TEAM’s home base, Boucher said it’s important to him to give back. He is happy to sponsor good causes; one thing TEAM Wireless pays for is the School Resource Officer (SRO) at Bark River-Harris School.

“I love to be able to get back, because without, you know, the people supporting our business for this many years, you know, we wouldn’t be in business.”

People who visit certain area businesses may recognize that the TEAM name has been appearing in more places – there are now car dealerships under Boucher’s ownership, and he’s preparing to open a car wash, called TEAM Auto Shine.

As far as the Verizon stores, “our goal is, we want to have – within five years, we’re shooting for 1000 stores, is what our growth plan is,” Boucher stated.

While other people and businesses often relocate to metropolitan areas when they become successful, Boucher is insistent on keeping his home and main office in Delta County.

“I just think that’s amazing,” said Burford. “It’s rare enough for a business owner to become that big from the U.P., but the ones that do, they’re so tempted to recenter headquarters and say, ‘well, now I’ll move it to Chicago.’ … But he’s keeping it right there in Escanaba. That’s something to celebrate.”

Boucher, who now lives on a massive ranch tucked in a rural area of Delta County with his wife and kids, said that he hopes his story might be inspiring to others. Some of the 91,500 followers of his “Beaverlandlodge” Tiktok might say it is.

“You don’t see it a whole lot when a person starts from basically nothing, you know, and grows it,” Boucher said, again recalling his origins with the tiny lawn care business – “I was like 16 or 17 years old, and I had a minivan my dad gave me and a trailer.”

He said that he never went to college, “and I kind of think you either have that business sense, it’s in your brain, or it’s not.”

Of course, his success didn’t come without hard times. There were times when he was struggling to make loan payments, Boucher said.

“I mean, we’ve made mistakes over the years, and we’ve learned from it,” he remarked. “And we’ve just gotten stronger and better.”

It helps that he hasn’t become complacent. The hardworking landscaper in Boucher is still there – in addition to staying on top of managing his businesses, he also makes the time to take care of his own picturesque lawn himself. He takes pride in and enjoys the work.

Pleased with the trajectory of TEAM Wireless, Boucher said, “we’ve had struggles along the way, but now we got a pretty good gig with Verizon. They really like us and want us to grow with them, so we’re one of their preferred partners.”

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R. R. Branstrom may be reached at rbranstrom@dailypress.net or 906-786-2021 ext. 140.