Steve Raymund

That year, Steve was a fresh-faced master's degree graduate from Georgetown University with an eye toward foreign economics. He tried the financial district of New York, where he was "one of 2,000 M.B.A.s in the office" at Manufacturers Hanover, said Edward. But barely getting by was not what Steve had in mind, so he returned home to Florida without a full-time job. Edward offered him the opportunity to create a retail catalog for Tech Data's burgeoning telemarketing department.

"I said, 'Sure. When am I going to get another opportunity like this?' I figured I'd do that for a few months and earn a few dollars until I could hustle up something else," Steve said.

The younger Raymund also helped out in product management, purchasing, anywhere an eager hand was needed. After four months, several of the top executives left for a crosstown competitor, taking most of the Raymunds' business and product lines with them.

"We went from doing $200,000 a month to $50,000 a month," said Steve. Tech Data decided to concentrate on the fledgling PC market and never looked back.

Once he bought it, Steve was committed to the company and had a loyal core of about 10 employees by his side. "They said as long as the checks didn't bounce, they could stay with it," jokes Steve. "Some are still with us."

Lynne Hallman, a systems analyst since March 1984, remembers those early days as a learning experience for everyone, including Steve.

"We were all very young. We were all together with the same level of knowledge, the same interests. Everybody was everybody else's friend. Steve was just your average guy. We didn't have voice-mail or E-mail so if he had a question, he'd just come over and ask you," Hallman said. Steve has maintained that open communication throughout the years, she said.

But Steve is not only a great teacher, he is a great student, said Terry Haggerty, who left Tech Data earlier this year as vice president and general manager of marketing services to pursue an international M.B.A. "He had the foresight to surround himself with intelligent people to help him not only understand the PC industry as it evolved, but distribution as a channel and the role we would play," Haggerty said.

Steve is still a hands-on executive, but he has always been more inquisitive than intrusive, Haggerty said. "You could be sitting at a desk and he'd just show up next to you and ask what you were working on. You'd feel better if you had the right answer, but that's not what Steve was about. He had concern for the company as an organism. It was not predicated on a need to have his hands on everything," she said.

Before the advent of electronic order systems, Tech Data's sales associates used to put order forms in a basket that would be picked up by the distribution department. Steve would rifle through the pile two or three times a day looking for trends. "Today we have reams of reports that spit out the same thing, but he was a human calculator," said Haggerty.

Raymund's thirst for knowledge kept Tech Data in tune with the industry, and he still holds regular forums with employees and has grown comfortable delegating authority, said Haggerty.

Tech Data's revenue jumped to $11.5 billion in fiscal 1999 from $7.1 billion in fiscal year 1998. Its 2000 fiscal year ends Jan. 31. Much of the growth resulted from its acquisition of Munich-based Computer 2000 AG, but U.S. sales grew 17 percent last year.

"Steve is a very good leader, a strategic thinker and he does a great job making sure they are focusing on infrastructure," said Jerre Stead, chairman of Ingram Micro Inc., Santa Ana, Calif.

Raymund also is helping the vendor community and industry shape the future of the channel, said Dave Boucher, general manager of Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM Corp.'s Advanced Fulfillment Initiative. "One of the guys who is a thinker and who brings an awful lot of intellect to the whole industry is Steve Raymund. He looks beyond day-to-day and he has a lot of vision. He's steered Tech Data into the success it has realized," Boucher said.

Tech Data was the pioneer of co-location, shipping products to end users directly from a manufacturer's plant, a process that served as the seed of integrated distribution.

Steve said his biggest challenge now is finding resources to fund future endeavors in E-commerce and other integration initiatives. "It's not like we don't have ideas of what to do to remain competitive, it's just that we have limited resources to fund development costs," he said.

This year, Tech Data finished integrating its Computer 2000 AG acquisition, which almost doubled its revenue. Steve spent a year in Europe overseeing the integration, and that experience will benefit Tech Data for years to come, said Edward.

Steve said his children, William and Monica, adjusted to Paris more quickly than he or his wife, Sonia. And just when they were getting comfortable, it was time to return home to implement what he had learned. "The first year is the hardest for families to adjust. You have to learn where to live, where to shop. It's a shame that we had to pick up and move back because my wife had started to click. She was getting good at French, she was taking a cooking class and had built up a circle of friends. For my kids, it was turnkey. They immediately had things to do. For them it was a seamless transition."

In addition to it being a growing experience for his family, the overseas stint also will help Tech Data compete better on a global level.

"It was helpful setting him down and making him understand what is happening in the world market," the elder Raymund said. "We as a company have some growing up to do doing business in a world atmosphere. There are still some challenges out there."

And if anyone has answers to those challenges, Steve Raymund will probably listen.