Over the past couple of months we’ve noticed the advertising campaign that AD (Affiliated Distributors) has launched. We’ve seen online ads on a number of trade publication websites as well as MDM. Their new tagline “Together, We Win” infers a sense of community, group commitment and an effort for independents to group together to “win” (presumably take share from nationals).
We’ve also seen that AD has:
- Hired Ted Simpson as its new VP Marketing for the Electrical Division. Ted comes to AD from Philips Lighting
- Hired Bob Jordan as a VP Business Development for the Electrical Division. Bob comes to AD from OSRAM Sylvania
- Dana Schneider, formerly of SolarWorld Americas, joined AD as the Vice President of Clean Energy and Emerging Technologies. Many may remember Dana from seeing him at NAED regional meetings.
- In May / June added 4 new affiliates that joined the Electrical Division (and perhaps others based upon the types of distributors that they are.)
- Reported that Q2 was up 4% overall. The US Electrical group was up 5%, which exceeded most, if not all, of the national chains (and definitely exceeded publicly held national chains) and the Canadian electrical group was up 11%!
- Merged with a plumbing and HVAC marketing group in Canada by the name of Canaplus, which had 22 members. This is a new venture for AD.
For a company that was quiet for awhile, it’s starting to “make some noise”. Wonder what else is planned for either between now and NAM (early October) or will be introduced at NAM. And it’s good to see that some group of electrical distributors are outperforming the market.
What’s your perception of how AD is doing? And why do you think AD’s electrical distributor, in aggregate, are outperforming the market (and the chains)?
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