About Arcadian

Hello, my name is Mike Crudele, President of Arcadian Sales, the world’s #1 distributor for the BEL family of products. This newsletter offers a quick explanation of who Arcadian Sales is, and what it is that we do.

I’ll begin by explaining my background. I was born into the electronics business. My father started an electronic components distributor called Thor Electronics in the early 60’s, and I spent a considerable amount of time growing up working every aspect of the business from sales and customer service, to purchasing, testing and warehousing. After college I went to work for one of the largest distributors, Future Electronics, specifically in the FAI division, as a combination inside/outside salesperson. Then, I joined a company called Astrorep, and spent five years as a manufacturer’s rep. In 1999, I joined BEL (Bel Fuse Inc.) as their National Distribution Manager, and served as Regional Sales Manager in North America as well.

While I was at BEL, in 2000, we had a real need for a highly focused “niche” distributor to service all of the “non-strategic” opportunities that were brought to us daily. As you probably know, many of today’s distributors are huge, many generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, and a few with revenue in the billions. While that sounds impressive, it can be a real problem to interconnect, passive and electromechanical component manufacturers, like BEL.

These huge distributors which carry as many as 300 or more lines, just cannot have much expertise in any of them. Furthermore, they are simply too overwhelmed with their commitments to key accounts to put much effort into serving the tier II and III customer base on behalf of the smaller lines that they carry. So, after searching the market for a niche distributor to partner with BEL, I struck out. Then, an old friend of mine came to BEL looking for a job, and although we were not hiring, I encouraged him to start his own company to distribute BEL’s products, and in the summer of 2000 Arcadian Sales was born.

The partnership was an instant success, and has grown steadily over the past seven years. I made the decision in January of 2003 to leave BEL and take over operations at Arcadian Sales. My goal then was to become the #1 distributor in the world for BEL (now Bel Fuse - Stewart Connector,) and I believe that we have done that. We consistently are the most RESPONSIVE, the most FLEXIBLE, the most KNOWLEDGABLE, and the most properly INVENTORIED distributor of BEL products anywhere in the world.

We currently have over 500 BEL customers in more than 20 nations. We are an approved vendor with the world’s largest contract manufacturers, including: Celestica, FoxConn, Solectron, Flextronics, Sanmina-SCI, Jabil, Benchmark, Plexus, and Suntron, and we operate warehouses in North America and Asia in an effort to provide the highest level of service to our BEL rep partners and BEL customers.

In 2007, it is our goal to DOUBLE our BEL BUSINESS. We need your help to this goal. If you are a BEL employee or BEL rep, we ask that you to refer your BEL opportunities to us; we won’t let you down. No one works harder to service BEL customers, and we have no competing lines. If you are an OEM or CM, give us a shot; you will not be disappointed.

That said, I hope this has been an adequate explanation of Arcadian Sales, who we are and what we do. Keep in mind, at Arcadian Sales... it’s all about BEL!