PENN TWP — You can buy a light bulb for your kitchen at Tri State Supply Co.'s Dinnerbell Road location.

But admittedly, over-the-counter retail sales make up a slim 1 percent to 2 percent portion of the company's business.

An electrical and automation product distributor, Tri State Supply's biggest customers are industrial and commercial clients and contractors.

But lately, Jeff Van Zandt, vice president of operations, said nearly a quarter of the sales have come from customers in the Marcellus Shale natural gas industry.

“Through multiple recessions we've always remained profitable,” Van Zandt said. “We run a financially conservative and sound business and have great employees.”

But also a willingness to adapt to changing economic drivers has kept the company enduring and even expanding over five decades.

Jim Van Zandt, Jeff's father, helped start the business in 1963 after graduating from Susquehanna University in Snyder County. He based the company in Washington County, where it's still headquartered because he had ties there.

Initially, the company sold wholesale electrical products, pipe valve fittings, roofing products, and plumbing, heating and air conditioning supplies.

After whittling its way down to electrical items only in the 1960s, the company became an authorized distributor of Allen-Bradley and Rockwell Automation products in 1977.

As one of only 47 distributors in the United States, Tri State Supply also began to specialize in industrial automation before opening its first location in Butler County in 1992.

Still you can buy electrical supplies, like wire, boxes and switches there.

The company also has branches in New Brighton, Beaver County; Waynesburg, Greene County; and Wheeling, W.Va.

In Butler County, Tri State Supply originally was just off Route 68 in Connoquenessing Township. It moved about 7 years ago to its current home just off Route 8.

Van Zandt said Tri State Supply and Butler County were a nice marriage because there are a lot of original equipment manufacturers here. Those companies often shop at Tri State Supply for products they use in manufacturing their products.

“They buy products that you just cannot get at big box hardware stores,” Van Zandt said.

Tri State Supply, an independent company, is a distributor only. It does not make products.

Several years ago, the company noted the growth in the oil and gas industry in its home county of Washington and began wooing clients. Some of the products Tri State Supply offers are in demand by drillers and midstream plants.

It sells such items as explosion-proof lighting and fittings, retrofit lighting, and programmable logic controllers and drivers.

Sales to industrial clients are “flat” since they are still recovering from the Great Recession. But Van Zandt said, “The shale industry has been big for us, making up 20 percent of our sales.”

Thanks to these adaptations, Tri State Supply continues to grow. Van Zandt said the company is hiring an architect to build a new 20,000 square foot warehouse in Washington County, where both Van Zandt and his father still live.

Of Tri State's 70 employees, more than a half dozen are based at the Butler site and many are long timers working for the company as long as three decades.

“My father and I are proud of our employees,” Van Zandt said. “They have great technical knowledge, longevity and loyalty.”

No one has more longevity than Jim Van Zandt, 71, who still is company president and chief executive officer.

“He will never stop working. He enjoys it too much,” Van Zandt said of his father. “And the gas industry seems to have just re-energized him with all these new challenges.”

Address: 101 Dinnerbell Road, Suite 2Owner: Jim Van Zandt of Washington CountyWhat it does: It is an electrical and automation product distributorStarted: 1963Offices: Headquartered in Washington County with offices in Butler, Beaver and Greene counties and Wheeling, W.Va.Employees: 70