In 1909, the Kusel Telephone Supply Company was founded in St. Louis, MO. The small company assembled wooden wall phones, which consisted of a box, hand crank, mouthpiece and receiver. Seeing a bright future in electricity, which was first used in St. Louis in 1878, Kusel stopped selling telephones in 1918 and began selling light bulbs, drop cord sockets, flashlights, batteries, knobs, tubes and small wire. To keep the company a float during The Great Depression, Kusel sold Christmas tree light sets imported from Japan. That same year, a youngster named Cyrus J. Frost began working at Kusel, which at the time had about eight employees. The number of Kusel employees dwindled in the 1930’s to about three and it wasn’t until 1940 that Frost was able to purchase the company. It was World War II, and Frost would travel by train to New York City and Chicago to reach manufacturers and purchase merchandise to sell. In 1948, he officially changed the company’s name to Frost and, soon after, the company would release its first supply catalog.
In 1959 Frost’s son, Dale Frost, began working at the company. In the 1970’s Frost moved from its former location at 2480 Locust Street to its new location at 54 Weldon Parkway. In the 1980’s Dale Frost’s sons, John and Jeff, began working for the company and would later take over managing the company.
Frost opened its first branch location in Collinsville, IL in 1988. In 1990, Frost created its Voice & Data division and five years later moved to its current building at 2429 Schuetz Road.
In 1997, Frost opened its automation division and in 1998 opened a branch location in Columbia, MO. In 2007, Frost opened a branch location in St. Louis City, where the company first started nearly a century earlier.
Examples of buildings constructed using supplies from Frost include: the original Busch Stadium, the St. Louis Arena, the Metropolitan Building, Union Station and numerous area hospitals, factories, commercial buildings and hotels.