Tech, Green and Communicating Differently

A little bit of an “around the industry” to get the week started:

1. IDEA is going through some personnel changes (and interestingly, just before its E-Biz Forum). After over 35 years in the industry, the last seven as IDEA’s Director of Sales, Pat McCartin has decided to “seek other interests.” Pat’s been instrumental in helping IDEA promote the iDX to manufacturers and distributors throughout the industry. Beth Badrakhan, IDEA’s IDW Data Manager, has also left the company (and the industry0 and we understand that an administratively oriented individual also has left. Don’t know if the issues are related, cost-cutting or something else. Pat and Beth both had extensive industry experience adn relationships. Hopefully industry experience can be acquired to ensure that IDEA continues to progress to serve electrical manufacturer and distributor needs.
2. The new Grainger website is now live. Click here for an overview, and here for the new site. And Grainger can help contractors / end-users comply with the Buy America provision for stimulus funds – providing the Country of Origin for many products. Question is, “can you?” What are IDEA and Trade Service doing to help distributors meet this requirement, or do distributors need to go to manufacturers for the information?
3. An article in The Wholesaler, page 4, announced Infor’s introduction of its Flex program. According to the article, this new program provides customers a “clear, fast, cost-effective path to adopt Infor’s latest product innovations.” It appears that the software / service is designed to take some of the hassle, and cost, out of upgrading and adding on additional software functionality (which would be most appreciated by distributors, especially if they are fully trained on the software’s capabilities.) Infor also announced a 0% financing option called Infor Financing.
4. Distributors are getting into the solar business. Border States announced a relationship with CentroSolar to sell PV systems as an element of their Grid Solutions. If you are interested in solar, chance out United Electric’s page on solar and Turtle & Hughes’ offering (and their subsidiary, TurtleEnergy.) We are also hearing that other distributors in New Jersey, which is the second largest producer of solar energy in the US, are developing solar divisions.
5. Energysmartmarketers.com has released its research report on what contractors think about LEDs and what they are seeking from manufacturers and distributors (and yes, we have a vested interested in this!) An article in this month’s Purchasing discusses the LED market. While the overall LED market will decline 3% in 2009, everyone sees the LED general lighting market as offering “huge potential”, especially as costs decline (and new Philips research to reduce the need for heat sinks will help) and energy efficiency improves.
6. Wondering if “social media” is for you? Check out this video. The numbers are impressive, and perhaps more so when you consider the challenge of reaching “the next generation” (or, another way of thinking about this is “your kids”). While relationships are an importatn part of doing business, communicating through multiple medium is critical to success. Years ago, a Dr. Jeffrey Lantz from Harvard conducted research that showes you needed to communicate to people a minumim of 18 times through different mediums for your message to be heard / remembered (or consider this branding). Social media shoudl be more accurately thought of as social marketing … how to develop a marketing strategy, using all applicable mediums, to communicate a message, in the form that your audience wants to receive it. To achieve this, a communications strategy needs to be developed to identify the right message to the right audience while understanding the level of interaction you want and that your audience will / can / wants to provide.

   Thoughts?