Associated Enterprises Inc

Meritec ( ) is the electronic connector and cable assembly division of its privately owned parent company, Ohio Associated Enterprises, LLC (“Associated Enterprises”). Founded in 1966, the company has firmly established itself in the global electronic interconnection industry. The founder and owners actively participate in the day-to-day management of the company and insure that the company adheres to its Mission Statement.

Meritec can trace its 1966 beginning to a company called A P Products Incorporated founded by Meritec’s current CEO, John T. (Jack) Venaleck. Like many entrepreneurs, Jack started the Company in his home when he realized he had a solution to a growing and significant problem in the electronics industry. Using his formal physics and engineering education, his inherent design skills, a drafting board, and a small milling machine he designed, produced and sold the Company’s first products, a line of IC Test Clips. These were small, insert molded devices used by technicians for testing various size integrated circuits packages, which were then new to the growing electronics industry. The IC Test Clip line solved a significant problem, became immediately successful and is a standard in the industry today. That first product was followed by a line of “solderless electronic breadboards” also used by technicians and engineers to prototype new circuits. It too became very successful, and numerous other product lines and thousands of part numbers followed. The Company’s internal ability to design, tool, build and sell products that solve significant problems for customers quickly lead to growth into electronic connectors and cable assemblies in the 1970’s.

By 1977, the Company found itself selling and competing in several different markets. In order to focus efforts on the different needs of each market, it was decided to establish a “Parent Company” which is known today as Associated Enterprises and to create the necessary
divisions, subsidiaries and licensees. These manufacturing organizations, located in Ohio and California in the USA, Germany, England, France and Australia were created during the following eight years. In 1989 the parent company established the Meritec division located in Painesville, Ohio and consolidated its resources primarily to address solving significant problems customers were/are experiencing in the high frequency high performance and tight contact pitch connector and cable assembly applications. Then, in 1999, the parent company acquired majority interest in Joy Signal Technology, LLC ( ) located in Chico, California. Joy, now a Meritec sister company, is a leading supplier of interconnection products primarily sold to the Automated Test Equipment (ATE) industry.

Meritec has over 150 patents and, over more than 42 years, earned the reputation of a premier supplier of a wide variety of high quality, high performance Connectors, Cable assemblies, Adapters, DIMM Sockets, SOP Sockets and Custom Solutions to customer’s problems.