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Avnet's History - Family Beginnings
A 10,000 employee corporation with offices spanning the globe... did Charles Avnet dream of this while he was hoofing it up and down East Coast docks selling surplus radio parts 80 years ago?
Early in the last century, Charles Avnet began selling surplus parts on the radio rows of U.S. port cities. The radio was the big thing, and ham radio enthusiasts, designers, inventors and ships docking in New York for their homemade ship-to-shore radios would visit the parts sellers to pick up what they needed. Buying from suppliers, selling to customers… by 1921 Mr. Avnet was considered a pioneer in the fledgling electronic components distribution business.
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The building on North
Moore Street where the
Avnets began their
assembly operations in 1944 manufacturing military
antennas for the war effort. |
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An early mainframe computer bearing an
Avnet logo from the period. |
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When factory-made radios hit the popular consumer market in the mid-1920s, Mr. Avnet again adjusted his distribution pipeline and began selling parts in quantity to dealers and manufacturers. He branched out into automobile antenna assembly and car radio kits over the next decade, and as World War II came on his son, Lester Avnet, joined him in making antennas for the U.S. armed forces.
Charles Avnet's namesake business was flourishing. In 1955, the same year the company began assembling connectors in New York City, Avnet was incorporated. Robert Avnet, another of Charles Avnet's sons, was named chairman and CEO of the family business. Lester Avnet became president. The family-run company reached its first $1 million sales milestone a year later.
A second connector assembly plant was opened in 1956, this one on the West Coast along with a Los Angeles warehouse, to serve the aircraft industry. Soon thereafter, an agreement with Bendix made the father-and-sons concern its first franchised electronic connector distributor. Avnet continued to expand, and in 1959 the company went public as Avnet Electronics Corporation with a listing on the American Stock Exchange. A spate of key acquisitions followed over the next 10 years. Avnet broadened its horizons, acquiring distributorship contracts in the new fields of semiconductors, relays and potentiometers.
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Lester Avnet, co-founder of Avnet, Inc. and
its chairman and president until his death in 1970. |
For more than half a century, an Avnet was at the helm of the company Charles Avnet established. Lester Avnet served as president and chairman of the board until his death in 1970. Robert Avnet, who'd also served as chairman, had passed away five years earlier. The company that began as one man's livelihood has continued to grow and evolve.
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Avnet's History - Family Beginnings