Avnet

Avnet Inc. is the largest distributor in North America of electronic components and computer products for industrial and military customers. The company consists of three major product groups: Electronic Marketing, Video Communications, and Electrical and Industrial. The Electronic Marketing Group handles assembly, processing, and marketing of electronic and electromechanical components and computer products for industrial and military clients. This group accounts for about 85 percent of Avnet's sales, with more than half the group's sales generated by its Hamilton Hallmark division. Avnet Computer Group accounts for about 15 percent of group sales. The Video Communications Group handles assembly and marketing of television signal processing and audio equipment, including home satellite antennas. The Electrical and Industrial Group distributes electrical insulation, magnet wire, electrical equipment, seals, electrical motors and parts, and industrial maintenance products. Its Freeman Products company manufactures and sells trophy components, engraving supplies, plastic injection moldings, and zinc diecastings. Avnet, like other electronics distributors, buys components in volume from suppliers and stocks and resells them to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). The distributors operate as a sales force for the suppliers, reaching OEMs the suppliers cannot reach cost-effectively. Although nearly 1,100 electronics distributors operate in the United States, the five largest account for more than half of the total distribution volume. Avnet's predecessor was a small distributor of radio replacement parts founded by Charles Avnet in 1921 in lower Manhattan. Avnet and other entrepreneurs set up small parts jobbing operations in the basements or back rooms of their parts stores on Courllandt Street in New York to sell ham radio parts to ships and hobbyists in the early days of radio broadcasting, before commercial, battery-powered radios were available. "Radio rows" sprang up in New York and other major cities, and Avnet and the other dealers sold parts and made repairs, first on ham radios, and then as manufacturing developed, on commercial sets. As radio manufacturing grew, parts distribution also took off. During the 1930s, Avnet's company also manufactured automobile antennas and car radio kits. When World War II started, radio parts became important to the war effort. Since production of home radio sets was prohibited, radio shop owners began selling parts to government and defense contractors instead of consumers. During this time, Charles Avnet and his son Lester established Avnet Electronic Supply Co. At the same time, other companies that would become key elements in Avnet's development were being launched; some of their founders would go on to become top executives at Avnet. In 1948, Leon Machiz and partner Seymour Schweber invested $3,000 each to start Life Electronics Sales, which sold surplus connectors. The company prospered, but eventually the two split up, and Machiz founded Time Electronics. With the start of the space program in the late 1950s, Avnet, Time Electronics, and the other electronic distributors thrived. Anthony Hamilton, a buyer for Lear, Inc., went into business for himself in 1957 as a GE-franchised distributor of tantalum capacitors. Sales for Hamilton Electro Sales reached over $1 million in the first year and more than doubled the next year. In Texas, a Westinghouse manager, Jack Turpin, opened Hall-Mark, which first became a Motorola franchise. Many other distribution companies also opened all over the country. The 1960s continued to be a period of acquisition, and Avnet purchased Guarantee Generator & Armature Co. in 1965, Channel Master Corporation in 1967, and Brownell Inc., Carol Wire and Cable Corporation, and Machiz's Time Electronic Sales in 1968. Regarding the Time Electronic acquisition, some claimed a conflict of interest, as Time Electronic was a distributor for Cannon, while Av