As members of a team of owners of a long-established, yet quintessentially entrepreneurial specialty electronics firm, Margie Solomon and Laura Salci still sometime marvel at the journeys that led them into a distribution warehouse in Burbank. “I started in 1986 for the company’s founder, Thomas A. Wolf,” Solomon said. “When I started, he told me he had a plan. He wasn’t ready to do it yet, but he wanted to sell the company to (the employees) some day.” Actually, it turned out that Wolf wasn’t ready until 1999. And, as he envisioned, the two women he hired 13 years earlier bought it. But that trek was far from a sure path to succession, as it included a period during which Solomon resigned to end a long commute of which she had grown weary by 1990. Nevertheless, today TAW is as known among the audio equipment and medical-device communities for its hands-on ownership team as it is for the high-end, German-made capacitors the company sells. “Of course the WIMA capacitors and resistors are flawless, but it’s really the girls that are high-end,” said Alan Dickson, owner of the professional audio-components brand, Aurora Audio. “You can’t compare their customer service, their personal touch and responsive business practices to the rest. That’s why I use them.” To avoid burdening readers with too technical a description of a capacitor, suffice it to say the mostly small (generally smaller than a dime) components are plastic pieces with two metal prongs. Capacitors are used in electronic circuits to block the flow of direct current while allowing alternating current to pass. They can be found in almost every type of electrical product and are capable of storing electric energy when disconnected from a power supply, which makes them useful as temporary batteries. Sitting across a desk decorated with crayon-colored illustrations created by her daughter a few years ago, Solomon said she doesn’t regret a thing. “I thought I wanted to be an elementary school teacher,” she said. “I got married, and Laura (Salci), who was already working here, said ‘Come on over to TAW.’” Having finished college but not yet found a teaching job, Solomon said “Why not?” She may not teach elementary school students about science or anything else, she’s immersed in it every day. Products that use TAW’s made-in-Germany components include unlimited power supply systems (back-up power supply), semiconductor-engraving lasers, ultra-upscale audio components, both for commercial and consumer uses, medical devices, high-end lighting ballasts, and some aerospace devices. “In fact, we are supplying components to JPL for the next-generation Mars rovers,” Solomon said. “I guess that’s kind of cool — knowing that something that’s gone through our building is roaming around on another planet.” However, Solomon is quick to point out that she is not a scientist or an engineer. “I’m really just a sales person,” she said. Through the years, TAW has maintained an average growth rate of around three percent. But there have been years of negative growth. Not surprisingly, the past year was one. In fact, the firm’s revenue dropped by 48 percent from 2007-09. However, there’s hope among the owners of TAW that 2010 is likely to be a growth year. “We could grow as much as four percent,” Solomon said. “Or at least at a rate approaching that figure.” For decades, TAW was essentially the sole distributor of WIMA’s products. “At one point, before we bought the company, Mr. Wolf was asked by WIMA where he wanted the dividing line to be — for the West Coast territory,” said Solomon. “He said all he wanted was Southern California.” It’s been different under hers and the rest of the ownership team. “We’re a little firmer about our territory,” Salci said. “There other major distributor —and there are actually three of us in the U.S. now — has customers who they have no control over, who sometimes resell in our territory, and that’s something we deal with.” However, according to Salci and Solomon, WIMA, which was founded in 1948 in Westphalia and is a classic post-war re-industrialized German success story, insists that its distributors not operate as hostile competitors. “We do cooperate,” Solomon said. “That’s kind of a given.” Occasionally she and Salci travel to Mannheim, Germany to meet with WIMA in order to refresh TAW’s relationship among the two companies’ leaders. “The U.S. is an important market for them,” Solomon said. “And, even though we’re small, they value us greatly. And, of course, we are very proud to carry their products, which are considered the best in the industry.” In 2010, Solomon expects to hire back at least one of the employees who were laid off midway through the recession. In fact, she speaks to each of the two employees who she had to lay off every week, just to see how they are faring and to give them updates about the company’s near-future prospects. Of course, that one of the former workers is married to a current one makes the practice of keeping in touch easier than it might be otherwise. “That’s the hardest thing about this job,” she said. “We really are a family here, and layoffs are just bad no matter how you look at it. There’s no guarantee, but we think this is going to be a very good year.” Relationships are the most important asset the company has, Salci said. Customer Aurora Audio couldn’t agree more. “For instance, I have a box of 3,000 little (capacitor) disks I have to go through, one-by-one, because this Canadian company sent me these things that are horrible,” Dickson said. “No fooling around, no baloney: These things I have are horrible. I have to find 300 good ones. If they had come from the girls at TAW — and I knew Mr. Wolf, the late former owner of the company; and he’s be proud of how they’re running the company —if I got these things from them, Laura or Margie would offer to come by and pick them up and replace them with good products.” But, said Dickson, he never would have gotten substandard product from TAW. TAW Electronics Inc. Business: Distributor of Imported, High-end Electronics Components Employees: 5 Years in Business: 47 Years Revenues in 2007: $2.3 million Revenues in 2008: $1.8 million Revenues in 2009: $1.2 million
Circuit Makers
