Last week’s NAED SouthCentral attracted a decent crowd, defined as people who registered (as a number of people were no-shows due to weather in Chicago and the Mid-Atlantic / NY area). 68 distributors (excluding IESC and Bell Electric – sorry […]
Last week we had the opportunity to speak with a couple of manufacturers and a number of reps. The conversations turned to how companies are reacting to the economic environment. Some companies proactively restructure to manage expenses and ensure profitability; […]
It appears that as much as the economy has created the slowdown in the construction industry, politics is contributing to the process. A recent article on ForConstructionPros.com highlights recent Congressional hearings regarding PLAs. PLAs are “project labor agreements” and when they […]
On Monday we shared recent attitudinal research of electrical distributors’ thoughts regarding marketing funding and co-op funding in particular. As you would expect, we also reached out to a number of manufacturers to gain their perspective. The manufacturer feedback was […]
Last month Channel Marketing Group conducted a brief electrical distributor attitudinal survey regarding marketing co-op funds and wanted to share the results. By no means are they scientific as we had about 100 responses. The questions we asked, and the […]
On Monday there was an article in the WSJ entitled Copper Vets Make Bet with Start-up Firm. The article discussed the launch of a new mining company that is going to search for overlooked deposits of copper and possibly other […]
The beginning of the year has seen a number of “consultants” talk about continuing to focus on inventory management, pricing management and other inward focused initiatives. While they all are valuable in either getting to, or improving, profitability, they are […]
As you know, we weren’t at the recent NAED Western, but we’ve received some feedback on the meeting: Registered attendance appeared to be strong (as determined by the registration list) but a number of people have commented that there appeared […]
Is GE taking a page from Philips? GE Lighting’s recent announcement that it will be combining its Lumination division with its commercial and industrial fixture group, GE Lighting Systems is reminiscient of when Philips acquired Genlyte-Thomas and then began integrating […]
Much news in the wire business today with Southwire, AIW, Encore and General Cable all making financial news … acquisitions and debt payoffs. Starting with the big announcement, as many know, Southwire acquired “certain assets” of AIW (okay, the assets […]
