New Opportunities at EPCO, Viking, Border States, Van Meter

Congratulations to the following on their new opportunities

Ryan Montgomery joins EPCO – Engineered Products Company (EPCO), a supplier of specialty lighting and wiring consumable products for electrical contractors, announced that Ryan Montgomery has joined Engineered Products Company as its western regional sales manager. Montgomery is based in Colorado and will be responsible for nine sales representative agencies serving 10 states.

Prior to joining EPCO, Montgomery was director of sales for Rocky Mountain Lighting. During his tenure, Montgomery grew sales by working with architects and designers, successfully placing products in commercial, multi-family, education, and hazardous industrial locations.

Additional experience includes roles at Ledvance and Voss Lighting. 

“Ryan is an expert in setting and exceeding expectations,” said Engineered Products Company president Jim Anderson. “As we look towards continuing our market and product expansion in the western region, Ryan brings mindshare and a passion for the industry that really complements our corporate culture. We are happy to have him on board.”

“A sale is the beginning of the process not the end,” said Montgomery. “By cultivating relationships and ensuring a positive customer experience, I create customers for life.”

Jim Blank is named to the position of general manager to oversee Viking Electric’s new facility in Madison. This new facility is over 32,000 square feet and “was built to accommodate the growth of its customer base. Specifically, Viking Electric is interested in better managing the growing customer requests for additional storage, staging, and support services for a multitude of multi-million-dollar projects in and around Madison.” According to Black, “the space also allows us the capacity to add more job boxes and lighting carts to our inventory, an area to unbox lighting fixtures and load them onto carts, and the floor space to stage the loaded carts as they are queued for delivery to our customers’ jobsites.” The company is also looking into more forward-thinking ways to service its customers after hours by attaching job lockers onto the side of the new building.

Border States restructured itself into essentially an East and West structure and graphically shared where there could be natural synergies for geographic expansion. New roles include Don Masters as EVP East, Matt Eddleman EVP West, Brad Kvalheim as VP Public Power, Shane Kerska as Industrial VP Sales and Marketing, Pat Novak as VP Customer Experience, James Sipe as SVP Supply Chain, Tony Serati as VP Procurement

Brian Bytnar, will assume the role of Chief Sales Officer for Van Meter upon Mike Gassmann’s retirement at the end of the year (and congratulations to Mike … enjoy your retirement.)

Bytnar is currently Van Meter’s Chief Development Officer and previously has been a Regional Vice President and VP Supplier Relations and Sales Support for the organization over the past 13 years. (And if you are interested in seeing an electrical distributor with an active blog, check out Van Meter’s.)