Twenty-five years ago in California, Tri-Ed established itself as a distributor of security and low-voltage products. Now, a quarter-century later, the wholesale distributor has expanded well beyond its original Western territories and spans from the East to the West Coasts.
The current version of Tri-Ed really began in early 2005 when Steve Roth, president of ADI from 1985 to 2001, bought the distributorship and brought in Pat Comunale and James Rothstein to help manage the business. The corporate headquarters was planted in Woodbury, N.Y., and they invested in a new IT management system about one year ago that would help manage sales and support for both U.S. and Canadian operations.
At the same time, Tri-Ed was taking a strong focus on establishing new branches to better serve regional markets, and linking up with new vendors that had previously not been carried by the distributor. Today, Roth says that Tri-Ed has become the largest of the independent whole security distributors.
