Author

David Gordon

Gordon is president of Channel Marketing Group. Channel Marketing Group works with manufacturers, distributors, manufacturer reps and technology companies in the electrical industry to help companies accelerate their performance through strategy development, marketing creativity and market research. CMG generates ideas that generate results.


Customer Segments  / Growth Strategies  / Lighting  / Lighting2  / Marketing  / Sales Channel  / Supplier / Products
Planning for 2009
David Gordon Posted On September 30, 2008


The beginning of the meeting season coincides with the beginning of the planning season. Many manufacturers are well into the process with some distributors just starting. Looking into your crystal ball can be challenging, especially in light of recent uncertainty.While […]


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Customer Segments  / Growth Strategies  / Lighting  / Lighting2  / Marketing  / Sales Channel
EMCOR Shows the Way for Electrical Distributors
David Gordon Posted On September 25, 2008


Yesterday there was an interesting ad in The Wall Street Journal. An electrical and mechanical contractor, EMCOR, with almost $7 billion in revenues of which about 25% is electrical, was advertising their services. While the reasons are obvious – developers […]


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Associations
Where Art Thou Independent Distributors?
David Gordon Posted On September 22, 2008


We received the preliminary attendee list for the upcoming NAED Eastern Region, its online for those whose who registered for the conference, to be held in Marco Island, and were very disappointed to see that the conference is evolving (or […]


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Growth Strategies  / Industry Consolidation  / Research Reports
Asking Yourself … “Should I Sell?”
David Gordon Posted On September 17, 2008


On Monday we reported that we had heard that Maurice Electric, Washington DC, had sold their business (to USESI, which operates Electrical Wholesalers) (read the press release). Since then we have heard of a couple of other deals that are […]


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Branding  / Industry Consolidation  / Marketing  / Pricing  / Productivity  / Supplier / Products
Advance, Maurice, Private Labeling, Credit and More in Reading Roundup
David Gordon Posted On September 14, 2008


Cleaning out the office and the newsletters we receive and wanted to share some observations: Tedmag.com and Bill Attardi’s EnergyWatch alluded to Philips changing the name of Advance Transformer to Philips Lighting Electronics. We asked a couple of distributors about […]


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Growth Strategies  / Pricing  / Productivity  / Profitability
eConnectivity … Enhancing Contractor & Distributor Profitability
David Gordon Posted On September 11, 2008


Recently we’ve spoken to a number of distributors about the operational aspect of their business. A recurring trend is the interest in improving cashflow. While a group of distributors have focused on better managing their inventory investments, many are looking […]


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Marketing  / Reps  / Sales Channel
The New Manufacturer Marketer … Reps
David Gordon Posted On September 3, 2008


The recent issue of NEMRA’s Hot Wire had an interesting article on the marketing role that reps are now undertaking on behalf of a number of manufacturers: Representatives Shoulder the Marketing TaskMany NEMRA reps report that as a result of […]


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Customer Segments  / Lighting  / Lighting2
The Future of LEDs and CFLs
David Gordon Posted On August 27, 2008


Home Channel News’ August 11th issue provided insight into the lamp market. With incandescents effectively being banned by 2014, the future appears to belong to CFLs and LEDs. But with LEDs “at $50 for a light bulb”, what is the […]


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Growth Strategies  / Marketing  / Profitability
Retaining Market Development Funds (MDF)
David Gordon Posted On August 21, 2008


I was speaking with a distributor last week regarding the opportunity to speak to their salespeople, and probably suppliers, at their upcoming Field Marketing Summit. Their desired topic is “How marketing can help / The role of marketing“. Our conversation […]


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Marketing  / Pricing  / Profitability  / Supplier / Products
Continuing the Discussion on Private Labeling
David Gordon Posted On August 19, 2008


Interesting article in this month’s TED magazine entitled “The Myths of Buying Foreign Off-Brands” (article is not online). Interesting for a couple of reasons: The article is in TED, an association publication that includes manufacturers as affiliate members. This is […]


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