The lighting market, for many distributors, depending upon their business focus, represents 20-40% of sales. It’s substantial, especially given that they next two categories are switchgear / automation and wire / cable, as performance in this product category can significantly […]
The lighting market is more competitive than ever before. And with unit sales rates exceeding revenue growth rates, aside from declining materials costs, as they say “it’s the competition, stupid.” Historically the term “value engineering” is derisively referred to as […]
Earlier today Home Depot presented at the Raymond James 39th Annual Institutional Investors Conference. While, overall, Home Depot is not a significant competitor to electrical distributors, if you serve the residential electrical contractor / builder market or the small contractor market, […]
If there is a word to that represents the lighting market it is “change”. The technology has revolutionized the lighting category. Aside from the energy efficiency benefits, the technological changes are bringing enhanced functionality, is impacting the controls market and […]
The tone of last week’s NAED South Central, held in San Diego, was interesting and may be best described as “subdued”, business-like”, “expected”. Some used the word “quiet” and many were challenged when asked about trends that they observed or […]
According to a recent study conducted by Channel Marketing Group titled “State of eCommerce, Electrical Contractor & End-User Insights”, electrical buyers are accelerating their usage of online tools for product research, downloading of spec sheets, seeking pricing and checking inventory. […]
Recently Channel Marketing Group survey electrical contractors and electrical buyers within industrial and institutions to gain insight into their eCommerce and online usage. The study was done with support of selected distributors and manufacturers and Electrical Wholesaling. Over 1300 individuals […]
Rexel reported its 2017 and Q4 performance earlier this week. Overall they achieved good top line growth as well as strong margins at 24.5% resulting in strong 4.7% EBITDA … worldwide. We’ll focus more on how they did in North […]
Along with earnings updates, the last couple of weeks have brought lighting news from Cree, Philips, Hubbell Lighting and Eaton Lighting. Their recent announcements shed light on where the “Big 7” (Acuity, Eaton Lighting Solutions, Hubbell Lighting, Philips Lighting, Current […]
Over the past few weeks a number of national distributors have released their 2017 performance and earnings reports. AD, Grainger, Graybar, Anixter and WESCO and others have made news. We’ve also talked to a number of manufacturers who see the […]
