Electrical and Electronic Wholesaling in Ontario (1980s)
Electrical distributors must remain in both the electronic and electrical ends of the business to be successful, said Bryan Smith, President of Electrozad Supply Co., Windsor, from 1977 to 1982. “The electronics is the brains end of things. The electrical side is very important too.”
Among areas where electronics have made a strong impact were programmable controllers, cable and instrumentation, which have gone completely electronic.
His company now had two salesmen who devote all their time to electronics.
Mr. Smith emphasized the importance of electronics training for these and other personnel. “We teach the rudiments of getting involved in electronics. We encourage our people to take courses in it and we send them to every available course offered by manufacturers.
For Electrozad, the programmable controller marker is a particularly promising one. He said it will grow four- or five-fold by 1990. Selling peripheral devices for PCs will be equally profitable. Similarly, the market for electronic wiring and co-axil cable will grow in proportion to the upswing in demand for PCs, as will the demand for DC drive packages.
The decisions by Windsor’s vast automotive industry to install PCs “made our decision to get into them in a big way that much easier,” Mr. Smith acknowledged.
He says if distributors want to really survive, they must get their feet wet in electronics. “We definitely would have suffered if we hadn’t gone into electronics.”
Source: CEDA: Fifty Years of Service – An Historical Review of the Canadian Electrical Distributors Association, 1934 to 1984, Kerrwil Publications. Please feel free to reach out to us any time if you have great photos, historical anecdotes or perspectives. We would love to hear from you; linegoyette@kerrwil.com.
