Arrow Electronics is an American Fortune 500 company headquartered in Centennial, Colorado. The company specializes in distribution and value added services relating to electronic components and computer products. The company was ranked No. 109 in the 2023 FORTUNE 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. The company has also been recognized for 10 consecutive years at the top of its industry ranking on FORTUNE's “World’s Most Admired Companies” list.
History
Arrow Electronics was founded in 1935 when a retail store named Arrow Radio opened on Cortlandt Street in the heart of lower Manhattan's "Radio Row," the birthplace of electronics distribution. Arrow Radio, established by Maurice ("Murray") Goldberg, sold used radios and radio parts to retail customers. Other industry pioneers with businesses nearby were Charles Avnet and Seymour Schweber.
By the 1940s, Arrow was selling new radios—manufactured by RCA, GE, and Philco—and other home entertainment products, as well as surplus radio parts that were retailed over-the-counter in a parts department at the back of the store. Soon the firm started seeking franchises to sell new parts; the first manufacturers to franchise Arrow were RCA and Cornell Dubilier. The business was incorporated as Arrow Electronics, Inc. in 1946.
In the early 1950s, with additional franchises and a small field sales organization, Arrow began selling electronic parts to industrial customers. A second storefront/sales office was opened in Mineola, Long Island, in 1956. By 1961, when the company completed its initial public offering and listed its shares on the American Stock Exchange, total sales amounted to $4 million, over half of which came from the industrial sales division, with the remainder from the traditional retail business. During the 1960s, Arrow moved its headquarters to Farmingdale, New York (Long Island), and opened additional branches in Norwalk, Connecticut, and Totowa, New Jersey. The company relocated its headquarters office to Centennial, Colorado, in 2011.
In 1968, Glenn, Green & Waddell, a partnership formed by three recent graduates of the Harvard Business School, B. Duke Glenn, Jr., Roger E. Green, and John C. Waddell, led a private investor group that acquired the controlling interest in Arrow. The investors saw an opportunity to consolidate the fragmented electronics industry. Duke Glenn served as chairman.
1970s
Entering the 1970s with $9 million of annual distribution sales, Arrow ranked no. 12 among U.S. electronics distributors. No. 1ranked Avnet was 8-times Arrow's size.
During the ’70s decade, by winning key semiconductor franchises (led by Texas Instruments in 1970) and opening sales offices in over 20 U.S. cities, Arrow grew its electronics distribution business at an average annual rate of 34 percent. By the end of the decade, the company's electronics distribution sales had climbed to $177 million, making Arrow the country's second largest electronics distributor.
The company took on high levels of debt through frequent public bond offerings, to fund its growth strategy. Additional growth capital was provided through the 1969 acquisition of Schuylkill Metals Corporation, a lead recycling company. (This business, having served its purpose, was sold in 1987 amidst problems associated with being designated an EPA Superfund site contaminated with lead and chromium.)
In the 1970s, Arrow discontinued its retail operations and inaugurated the electronics distribution's first integrated on-line, real-time computer system to provide up-to-the-minute inventory positions and facilitate remote order entry. In 1979, Arrow was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. That same year, it acquired Cramer Electronics (historically the U.S.’s second-largest distributor), the company's first major industry acquisition, which provided access to many markets in the western United States.
1980s to present
On December 4, 1980, a fire in a Harrison, New York, hotel conference center killed 13 members of Arrow's senior management, including Glenn and Green. Waddell assumed leadership and, in 1982, recruited Stephen P. Kaufman, formerly a partner of McKinsey & Company, to join Arrow as President of the company's Electronics Distribution Division. Kaufman succeeded Waddell as CEO in 1986 and as chairman in 1994.
In 1988, Arrow adopted a growth strategy by acquiring Kierulff Electronics. According to Forbes, the company closed down all four Kierulff Electronics warehouses and within a year it experienced "miraculous" growth that went from a bottom line of $16 million loss in 1987 to operating profits of $10 million.