Industrial leader occupies quiet cornfield

by Kathryn Grondin
Daily Herald Staff Writer
March 19, 2001

When considering launching a business today, entrepreneurs first commission studies and do follow-up research before laying brick and opening up shop.

Aiming for global markets - metropolitan centers like Chicago with its rail lines and New York with shipping ports - seems most logical.
Not so for international distributor Richardson Electronics.

The leading American manufacturer of gas and vacuum photo tubes and top distributor of radio frequency and wireless communications parts is tucked quietly away amid the cornfields west of Geneva.
If you don't often travel west on Keslinger Road through LaFox, you probably wouldn't know the half-billion-dollar-a-year company is there.
LaFox is an unincorporated hamlet that you truly can miss if you blink while driving through it.

The post office once operated out of a space inside Potter's General Store, before Richardson's prominence around the world generated too much mail for the rural setup.

"I'd like to say that it was some vision (that brought us to LaFox), but the facts are that the family all grew up in Wayne," said Edward Richardson, president and CEO.

Though no grand plan was mapped out on paper, good business sense did play into the decision.

The road to La Fox

The late Arthur Richardson Sr. launched the business in 1947 out of his kitchen and a barn that remains on the family property in Wayne.

Global industry leader Richardson Electronics, based in LaFox, had humble beginnings in this small barn on the Wayne farm of Florence and the late Arthur Richardson Sr., who founded the company back in 1947. Florence, at 96, still works almost daily at the family business.

He'd worked for Majestic Radio, selling war assets after World War II ended. When the company went bankrupt, Richardson collected his salary in goods instead of cash and used it to start his own business.

"He was the easiest-going man in the world," recalled wife Florence Richardson, who at 96 still works almost daily in the company's human resources department. "He was sure it was going to go right. He was going to make it."

In addition to being an eternal optimist, Richardson was smart and hard-working. Even when the industry was leaping toward a future in solid state electronics, Richardson knew the market would not accept the technology as quickly, leaving room for the older vacuum tubes. "He worked the sales end during the day," Florence said. "We worked at night cleaning tubes.

"It seemed hard then, but I wouldn't change anything."

In the early years, not all of their ventures - and there were plenty - turned out as well. She remembered removing metal straps from thousands of wooden boxes and trying to resell them for a dime. They ended up burning most of them, she said.

"We did a lot of screwball things," she said. "We had lots of fun experiences. It turned out all right."

Richardson's next smart move was welcoming his son, Edward, aboard in 1961 and subsequently making him partner.

For a time, the business offices were in Chicago and then in Franklin Park. Arthur died in 1979 and missed out on the company's move in 1986 to LaFox.

When Edward took over in 1974, he'd started moving the company in different directions. The firm first focused on acquiring firms that were making the tubes, which led Richardson to the LaFox site where National Electronics was operating. The room to grow on the 80-acre property and quality labor there and in Geneva, where Richardson Electronics had bought Cetron, motivated the family business to stay put.

The gamble pays off

Edward Richardson knew the business wouldn't succeed without growing. "We followed the evolution of the technology," he said.

The company moved into distribution of radio frequency and wireless communications, industrial power conversion, medical imaging, security and display systems markets. Along the way, it added distribution centers in England and then others throughout Europe.

And it added to its product line.

It now sells RF and microwave components, power semiconductors, electron tubes, microwave generators, data display monitors and electronic security products and systems. And it's paid off. In these uncertain economic times, Richardson Electronics continues to thrive.
"Our sales are still up 27 percent this quarter from last year," Richardson said Friday. "We're on track to make $500 million in sales this year."

Meanwhile, the matriarch still remembers the humble beginnings. "I keep my fingers crossed," she said.