About Us

Meet the ATC Team

ATC Company History

Advanced Technologies Consultants, Inc. was founded in 1964 as Close, Inc. Its founder, John Close, was an industrial arts instructor at Plymouth High School in Plymouth, Michigan. Back then, schools were not well-funded and the business of education did not provide the level of benefits, pay and respect that educators deserved. So, in the spring of that year, John went into business for himself. The new company would supply industry and education facilities with quality technical training equipment.

John and his family continued to work in Michigan and throughout the United States supplying customers with quality curriculum and equipment. The secret of John's early success was to combine superior products with FREE lifetime service to create a package for the customer that was unparalleled in the industry.

In 1989, John was joined full-time by his son, Thomas Close. Equipped with an Operations Research and Information Systems degree and a sharp business mind, Thomas was a natural in the business. The company was renamed Advanced Technologies Consultants, Inc., which more fully communicates its purpose and direction. Thomas spent several years working alongside his father and eventually assumed leadership of the company.

In the early 1990’s, ATC was primarily focused on distributing Lab Volt products in Michigan, but its territory soon expanded to include the states of Indiana and Illinois. During the mid- to late 1990’s, Thomas’s staff and sales force grew proportionately as ATC’s territory increased to cover Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma. The company currently encompasses the states of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas and West Virginia representing the leading manufacturers of technical training curriculum and equipment.

ATC’s product line has expanded and kept pace with new and innovative products in order to better serve the educational market. Today, Advanced Technologies represents various companies that produce a wide range of Training Equipment and Curriculum as well as Design & Prototyping Software. Also, as before, Educational and Industrial Furniture is available for any application.

ATC has been recognized with numerous awards for curriculum development as well as outstanding service and sales awards. The company is very proud to have been named “Dealer of the Year” by such manufacturers as Lab Volt Systems, Inc., Greene Manufacturing, Inc., EMCO Maier, FANUC Robotics, NetOp Systems and AXYZ. Now, as the nation's leading distributor of technical training products, ATC still stands by its founding principle: To provide quality curriculum and equipment at a reasonable price combined with free lifetime service.