Perhaps he did not even believe it entirely. In the early 1980s it was hard to envision the tiny computers evolving into desktop boxes attached to screens the size of a television set. It was hard to imagine they eventually would take over corporate desks and home offices.

But Raymund had a little company called Tech Data Corp., which he had founded a decade earlier to supplement his income. Originally a dealer of electronics, the company was evolving into a distributor of monitors and add-on cards. But Raymund wanted it to keep up with the market.

Those were the days when achieving sales of $1 million in a month was reason to celebrate at Tech Data. "We had parties when we did $1 million a month; we had parties when we got to $5 million a month," Raymund recalls. "I would have said if we can get the company to $100- million or $150 million a year, we would have accomplished a lot."

Today, if the $4.6 billion Tech Data had just a $1 million day, something would be terribly wrong. The company that started as a side project for Raymund has become an industry institution, a wholesale mammoth with a reputation of solid performance that is expected to reach $7 billion in sales this year.

It is now an international company with warehouses and offices in Brazil and Europe. It is an operation run by accountants, logistics experts and computer systems. And it is too stoic for Raymund, 69.

"I'm not so sure I'd be happy in the company today," Raymund muses. "It's not entrepreneurial. From a managerial standpoint, it's operational."

Raymund was more comfortable when he could fit all 20 employees--what was once the entire staff--in his house to celebrate another company milestone.

Not that he was a pushover as a manager, says Bob Seeley, Tech Data's second-most senior employee. "He was a tough taskmaster," Seeley recalls. "If you didn't do what he asked you to do and how he told you to do it, he talked to you about it."

And while Tech Data has evolved into what a former employee calls a "politically correct atmosphere where everyone is nice to each other," back in Ed Raymund's days, "gruff" would have described it better.

But then, Raymund could not afford to tiptoe around employees who did not follow directions. He was too busy building an empire.

Even when he started the transition of power to his son, Steve, Tech Data's current chairman and chief executive, Raymund remained involved. "In real gutsy, early decisions, Ed was at least a co-architect," says John Williams, a Tech Data director and the investment banker who helped take the company public in 1986.

Those decisions included setting the stock price for the initial public offering at $9.75 per share. Father and son agreed that $10 per share would have eroded demand.

They managed to agree on business matters despite the obvious disparities in their personalities. "Their personalities are entirely at opposite ends of the pole," says Annette Raymund, Ed's ex-wife and Steve's mother.

Ed is the dreamer, Steve the methodical executor. Steve is mild-mannered and measures his words. Ed is vocal and borders on stern.

But business instinct is their middle ground. "Ed was firm with negotiations," says Williams. "He was good at win-win negotiations, as his son is."

When Steve got involved in the company, he ran operations as general manager and Ed put his traveling shoes on. Ed embarked on whirlwind tours across the country to win distribution contracts with vendors and round up business with small resellers. Other distributors, meanwhile, were chasing business with large aggregators and an emerging retail market.

The sense of partnership that Ed Raymund instilled in the company remains, says his son. "It was embedded into the work ethic here. This isn't necessarily natural. A lot of people don't like their suppliers."

Raymund founded Tech Data in 1973 as a side project to his primary occupation as a contract representative for electronics manufacturers. He started out as an employee for another manufacturer's representative in Southern California. Ever the entrepreneur, he saw a better opportunity after about eight years by going into business elsewhere.

"I saw an emerging market in the Southeast, so I moved, lock, stock and barrel, with my wife and four little kids down to Florida," Raymund recalls.

By 1960, Raymund had established himself in Florida, where several years later he began looking into other business possibilities. Much of the electronics rep business involved the defense industry, recalls Annette. "Ed was really concerned that the rep business wasn't going to advance that much further," she says.

In the late 1960s, Raymund began stocking and distributing such high-volume items as sockets and capacitors in a precursor to the Tech Data business. Raymund thought he might get better profits from the high-volume lines if he started a distribution business.

"The line that really made Tech Data profitable and possible was a company that was called Textool, now a part of 3M. This was kind of a classic Adam's rib type of company," Raymund recalls.

In the early years, Tech Data sold computer memory cassettes, eight-inch floppy disks and printer ribbons to end users. By the early 1980s when the PC hit the market, the company started making the transition to two-tier distribution and selling to VARs.

After IBM Corp. launched a 16-bit PC that Raymund says "really made the business take off," the company started carrying monitors, printers and add-on cards. Names such as AST Research Inc. appeared on the Tech Data line card. Raymund began to realize the business he had launched as a peripheral attempt to boost profits was becoming part of something much bigger.

He needed only look at Tech Data's yearly financials for confirmation. In 1982, the company grossed $2.1 million. One year later, already a full-fledged two-tier distributor, Tech Data had revenue of $2.3 million. In 1984, Tech Data's sales jumped to $6.3 million, then to $21 million in 1985, and leapt to $38 million in 1986 when it went public.

Tech Data became a major force in the market through a methodical internal growth pattern that veered away from the kind of megamergers that produced its two closest rivals--Merisel Inc. and Ingram Micro Inc.

Tech Data's acquisitions traditionally have been small and strategic. The company acquired a software distributor to kick-start a software division and picked up a distributor in France to gain a presence in Europe.

First by zeroing in on the VAR market, then by expanding into dealers and eventually retailers, the Clearwater, Fla., distributor followed a measured pace of growth, earning Tech Data a sparkling image.

"We saw that there was a tremendous business evolution that was occurring. Between Steve and I, we understood there was a revolution in the making. I'm not sure we perceived the business would grow as fast as it did and become international," Raymund says.

In 1991, Ed Raymund retired. He had served as chairman after naming his son chief executive in 1985, but decided to hand over that title, too.

"Steve's done a fantastic job," says Raymund. "He's done the best job of anyone in the industry."

With his son at the helm of Tech Data, Ed Raymund has turned his attention to other interests. In addition to raising a child with his second wife, Tricia, Raymund now devotes time to alumni affairs at his alma mater, the University of Southern California. He also remains involved in the industry through his seat on Tech Data's board and that of Dallas-based PC Service Source Inc.

"He adds an enormous amount of insight," Mark Hilz, PC Service Source president, says of Raymund's directorship. "He's like your father sitting on the board, giving you advice and information."