Robert Rodin

Robert Rodin (born c. 1953) is an American business executive and author who is best known for transforming Marshall Industries into a pioneering business-to-business e-commerce leader while CEO from 1992 to 1999. Some have referred to him as "visionary" He holds board positions with Astound Commerce, Imre, Shift7 Digital, Biorasi, Supplyframe and Inspirage. He serves on non-profit boards of YPO LA Gold, ALS Therapy Development, and Advisor to Cancer Commons.

Education Rodin attended Bloomfield High School in Connecticut. In 1972, he and classmates coded a dating program for the senior class, chronicled in the Hartford Current as the “Love Computer”. Rodin enrolled at the University of Connecticut studies included biology, physics, calculus, chemistry, statistics, and psychology. Special projects included studies in marketing, attention spans, and consumer behavior. In 1977, Rodin graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology. He was later inducted into the University of Connecticut School of Business Hall of Fame in 2002.

Business career After graduation, he started off in the restaurant industry. He joined Marshall Industries in 1983 as a sales manager. Based in El Monte, California, the firm was a global distributor of electronic components including semiconductors, electrical connectors, and computer peripherals. Marshall's suppliers included Advanced Micro Devices and Toshiba. Marshall Industries customers included IBM, Solectron, and WebTV.

Rodin was promoted to corporate vice president in 1988 and succeeded Gordon S. Marshall as CEO of Marshall Industries in 1992. During Rodin’s tenure as CEO, Marshall Industries reported six consecutive years of record net sales and was one of the first companies to conduct E-commerce on the Internet. Rodin said of the changes, "We talked to every single person in this company during the conversion. It took great patience, and a lot of sleepless nights. I was scared to death about making changes." Dennis Trombley, a former marketing executive at Marshall, later claimed that Marshall would not have survived without Rodin’s changes.

E-commerce innovation Soon after Rodin viewed a demo of the Mosaic web browser in December 1993,

In 1997, PC Week ranked Marshall third in a list of the "most aggressive adopters of innovating products," citing the company's intranet. In 1997 and 1998, Business Marketing named Marshall the top business-to-business marketing website – no other leading distributors made the list of 200 sites. And Marshall was later named best business-to-business website two years in a row by Advertising Age. Rodin said of Marshall's customer service philosophy, “No one ever asks for sales person: they ask for someone to help them.” By 1998 Marshall’s network of branch locations served more than 60,000 customers and delivered sales and technical support 24 hours-a-day, 7 days-a-week. Sales per person more than doubled during Rodin's tenure, from $360,000 to $740,000. During his tenure as CEO, Marshall's annual sales increased from $500 million to $2 billion. The management changes that Rodin implemented have been the subject of case studies at Harvard Business School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and the University of Southern California. Rodin has served on the board of directors for Roxio, RosettaNet, and CommerceNet. He has also held advisory board positions with the University of Southern California and the University of Connecticut School of Business.

Personal life Rodin resides in Pasadena, California with his wife, Debbie.

List of works Free, Perfect and Now: Connecting to the Three Insatiable Customer Demands