Dive Brief:
- Investment management veteran Adam Press has joined Sandler Partners as the technology services distributor aims to expand its infrastructure, the company said in an announcement in the summer.
- Sandler Partners’ new president previously served as chairman and CEO for healthcare manufacturer The St. John Companies. Press has also managed investments for the prominent German industrialist Thyssen family.
- For years, Press unofficially advised childhood friend and Sandler Partners founder Alan Sandler. He is now stepping into an official capacity as the company grows in size. “He's got the professional background to take a look at the data and the analysis and not just do the Alan-Sandler-from-the-gut thing,” Sandler told Channel Dive.
Dive Insight:
Sandler plans to address inevitable questions that Press’ appointment indicates Sandler Partners is heading toward a sale. He said he’ll explain at the company's annual summit later this month that the hire means just the opposite.
Four years ago at the same event, Sandler vowed on stage that Sandler Partners would remain independent for at least another 10 years.
“Over the next six years, I want to make sure that where we invest our dollars and that I have a team in place to help us make the right decisions,” Sandler said.
By Sandler’s estimation, 24 TSD peers have been purchased recent years. The acquired firms faced pressure from vendor and agent partners grappling with a consolidated TSD market, Sandler said. Suppliers demand that TSDs be large enough in a sales volume to justify a relationship and API integrations, and agents demand that TSDs provide proactive commission teams, sales engineers and digital tools. Expanding leadership teams with executives such as Press also costs money and doesn’t always pay off, Sandler said
“I think these 24 TSDs realized, ‘Hey, we're getting marginalized. Let's take the money now,' Sandler said. “We looked at the same slope and said, 'We think we can climb it.'
Sandler Partners has styled itself an independent challenger to private equity-backed Telarus and Avant and publicly traded Intelisys. The company built a proprietary connectivity lookup tool called Scout and recently expanded its engineering bench. In 2025, Sandler Partners closed slightly north of $220 million in revenue, with a growth rate of 24%, according to Sandler. The company also signed 1,290 new agent partners in the last 12 months.
Sandler added that Sandler Partners intends to keep things congenial amid the rapid growth and Press’ appointment. But he echoed the title of Marshall Goldsmith’s book “What Got You Here Won't Get You There.”
“When you're an entrepreneur and you're very small, you say yes to everything,” Sandler said. “But as you get larger, you can't say yes to everything, and you get so many opportunities coming in your direction.”
Sandler turns to a familiar face in Press. The pair grew up together in the San Francisco Bay Area and have stayed in touch over the decades, frequently meeting to discuss business.
“It's always like a mini Young Presidents’ Organization with just the two of us,” Press told Channel Dive. “It's pretty amazing in hindsight that we've been good friends all those 50 years, and we always had different things going on business-wise. We'd always just use each other as sounding boards.”
Press is currently in the tenth city on the tenth week of a listening tour with Sandler Partners vendors and agents.
