Andrea Klein has built one of the largest independent distribution companies in the world working with technology giants such as Microsoft and Apple, founded on the principle of customer care.
Add a big milestone — her company, Rand Technology, is on track to exceed $1 billion in sales this year.
Chief Executive Klein said the Irvine-based firm, which she founded in 1992, is among eight global distributors of this size, though it is the only company that is 100% woman-owned.
“The right of entry is extremely high, as is the responsibility of the role,” she told the Business Journal. “You have to be highly certified. You have to have integrated quality management systems. You have to have a global footprint. You have to have financial wherewithal; you have to have legal accountability.”
The company manages and balances the supply chain of electric components and equipment found in cars, computers, phones, alarm systems, hospital devices and more.
This year, Klein is on the Business Journal’s list of 50 Most Prominent Businesswomen in Orange County.
Finding a Value Proposition
Klein was a communications major in college and said her plan was to go into public relations after graduation. At the time, she was working as a cocktail waitress at an El Torito restaurant to pay for classes.
When school was ending, one of her customers told her she would be good at sales and offered her a job selling computer chips at Diamond Electronics.
“This is 1980, I didn’t even know what a computer was,” Klein said. “So, I thought, while I’m looking for my big job in public relations, I will try this during the day.”
She said she fell in love with technology Âand spent the next decade learning about the industry since “it was all about the future.”
“They were just beginning to adopt technology in 1980, so I really got to learn it in its infancy,” she said. “We got to learn and grow with it.”
Klein worked for a decade selling to companies like Motorola and Lucent Technologies.
She decided she was ready to create her own company that would work on behalf of the customer and was less transactional. Klein sat down at her kitchen table and wrote up a business plan that became Rand Technology.
“From the time I was little, I was always a leader, but I always wanted to make my own decisions,” Klein said. “I was willing to take responsibility if I failed. And I was wanting to take it if I succeeded.”
Rather than having clients go directly to a component manufacturer, a franchise distributor or a regional broker, Rand buys and sells pieces of hardware to support companies from “every type of industry.” Klein says the company is “an integral part of the hardware technology supply chain.”
“Anything from AI, compute, networking, medical, industrial, automotive, aerospace and defense, everything that is electronic, I sell the parts that go in it,” Klein said. “They either have too much or they have too little, and it’s my job to find a cure for that.”
The company has sold 6.1 billion parts as of 2025 and supports more than 5,000 clients across 72 countries. The firm operates 10 facilities worldwide with 230 total employees.
Tier One Clients
Nowadays, Rand Technology’s customers include Fortune 500 hardware technology companies and Tier One clients such as Dell, Hewlett Packard (HP), John Deere, Cisco, Mercedes, BMW, Meta and Amazon. Klein said the company started working with Costa Mesa’s Anduril this month.
Two years ago, Rand Technology reported annual revenue of $250 million. Klein attributed the growth to reinvestments, new locations and more employees.
Rand most recently opened a facility in New Delhi, since technology is moving to India, according to Klein. Rand would also hire more engineers to build proprietary software designed to improve operations each decade. Klein went after new certifications as well.
“Each cycle, my company got better and better, and so here I am today, and we’re tracking to over a billion, and we expect to double that the following year,” Klein said.
An AI Build-Out
Klein says that when she started Rand Technology, she didn’t know how big the future of technology would become.
Now, she’s gone through several eras of technology advancements – from computers to the internet to electric vehicles and now AI.
“We are an integral part of the hardware supply chain, and we are right dead center in the middle of the build out of AI right now,” Klein said.
Nothing has changed about Rand’s strategy though. Klein said that thanks to the company’s forecasts from its team of analysts, she was able to warn her customers about AI back in 2020.
“My job is to really help the customer. So, I want to tell him what’s coming. I want to provide him with information so he doesn’t get ambushed later,” Klein said.
“It’s all part of customer care.”
An Education in Supply Chain
Andrea Klein knows that when she decides to move on from her distribution company Rand Technology, her next chapter will be about teaching the younger generations about the supply chain industry.
“I don’t think we have enough schools for supply chain here in the region,” she told the Business Journal.
Klein said she has talked with Orange Coast College about possibly setting up a “school of supply chain” in the future to face the current shortage of talent and expertise in the industry.
“It’s important in all manufacturing and we are in an incredible renaissance right now in technology hardware, because of AI, and we are very, very short in the industry of up-and-coming supply chain specialists,” she said.
She noted that the subject could be taught through courses at junior colleges and high schools, or even as early as fifth or sixth grade.
“I think that there’s a lot more Orange County can be doing,” she added. “You have to excite them earlier.”
