After three years of negative growth, electrical distributor industry sales finally registered positive growth in 2004. Led by the distributor served industrial market, DISC Corp., Orange, Conn., a leading provider of market forecast information for the electrical industry, expects total industry sales to top 6.5 percent this year and better than 8 percent next year.

Over the past 30 years, average annual growth has been 6.2 percent, so 2004 is right on target with the long-term historical growth rate. We’ve seen some fairly spectacular commodity price increases over the past year and that translated into a 5.8 percent price increase for the electrical industry overall. Taking account of the price effect this year, real physical volume — the best measure of changes in real resources — increased about 0.7 percent. (That’s over a full percentage point less than the long-term average). What’s so important about that? If you are adding or taking out resources from your business, you want to make sure those decisions are based on changes in physical volume, not on price changes.

You have reached this page because you attempted to view material that is only available to on-line subscribers. If you are already an on-line subscriber, please log in using the login box on the right. If you still cannot access the rest of this site, please email or call our customer service department:

US Toll Free: (866) 505-7173
International: (847) 763-9504
Email: custserv@newsletter.penton.com

If you are interested in being an online subscriber, please check out our Subscription page (or the tab above right).

Thank-you from the staff of Electrical Marketing.