Electronics distributor hits 1st billion-dollar year
IT started in 1984 with two brothers in a Garden Oaks home, with a landline telephone and notebooks. Leland C. Ackerley and his brother envisioned rapid-fire success for their electronic component distribution company, Smith & Associates.
It may have taken longer than expected, but the Houston-based company grew into a global enterprise of more than 460 employees, with more than half of its business now occurring overseas. Last year, Smith & Associates surpassed the billiondollar sales mark ($1.5 billion in revenue, to be exact) and rose to ninth place among the city’s top private companies surveyed by the Houston Chronicle.
“We’ve grown up with the electronics industry,” said Ackerley, who now serves as executive vice president.
That industry has changed significantly since the company’s founding. The notebooks were supplanted by computer servers and personal computers in the 1980s and ’90s. Continuing today with equipment for cloud computing and data centers, crypto-mining companies, automobiles and smartphones, Smith & Associates has met market demands as they come.
“We’ve always positioned the company to be ready for anything,” Ackerley said.
Most recently, Smith’s legal department has been on high alert, monitoring federal and international news regarding potential tariffs on Chinese trade that could hurt the industry.
Ackerley said it always seems to be feast or famine in the electronics industry. Currently, there’s a global feast at play, thanks to the Internet of Things accelerating sales, as well as crypto-mining companies driving market interest.
Ackerley now hopes the company can report $2 billion in sales by the end of the year.