Karla Trotman, president and CEO of Electro Soft in Montgomeryville, was recently featured by The Philadelphia Business Journal in an article titled “Family-Owned Business Awards 2024: Formed on the kitchen table, Electro Soft grows into an inspiration“.

According to the story, Trotman watched her father launch the company from their home in Ambler in 1986.

“She started out cutting wire by hand and earned 25 cents an hour for sitting at a bench and using a ruler to mark the various lengths she had to make for her father. She graduated to stripping the wires, and eventually to helping operate the wave soldering machine,” the company’s website says.

Her father started out “in a 2,000-square-foot space in Willow Grove before moving to a 10,000-square-foot facility in Montgomeryville where they’ve been for about 25 years, assuming another 9,000 square feet in the building.” She purchased the business from him in 2020.

The company has 28 employees and “specializes in contract manufacturing for an array of cables, box builds and wire harness assemblies. Its clients include the U.S. Department of Defense as well as those working with automated guided vehicles, particle analyzing and traffic signaling.”

Electro Soft reported $4.51 million in revenue in 2023 and experienced 20% annual growth in 2022 and 2023, The Journal said.

Trotman is teaching her two sons among other apprentices the same lessons she learned from her father.

“For me, more than just our family legacy, being a unique family of color in technology gives a level of inspiration to so many people that we can’t even quantify,” Trotman said. “… For me, it’s really just leaving a little bit of a mark in the world where you’ve helped people change their entire family trajectory.”

She lives in Ambler and holds a Master’s of Business Administration from Drexel University and a Bachelor of Science in Business Logistics from Penn State University, where she graduated with a minor in the Legal Environment of Business and also received a Purchasing Management Certificate.

Photo: Electro Soft