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Heard at the NAED South Central Regional

Feb. 20, 2015
Distributors in the National Association of Electrical Distributors (NAED) South Central Region gathered at the J.W. Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort and Spa in sunny San Antonio, Texas, were cautiously upbeat about the outlook for the year as the economy regains steam.

Distributors in the National Association of Electrical Distributors (NAED) South Central Region gathered at the J.W. Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort and Spa in sunny San Antonio, Texas, were cautiously upbeat about the outlook for the year as the economy regains steam.

Business is kicking in some areas that have been kicked hard over the past few years. Rhandi Kuchenmeister of K/E Electric said Detroit is bustling with commercial construction and residential growth is strong throughout the company’s Michigan territory. Scurlock Electric in Houma, La., which is heavily engaged in the marine and offshore oil markets, saw its best month in January and has seen no drop-off in business due to cratering oil prices, while construction in New Orleans is booming. Brook Electric is opening a new branch next week a couple of blocks from Wrigley Field in Chicago to serve the massive construction projects there.

This year’s NAED Chair, Maureen Barsema of BJ Electric Supply, Madison, Wis., (now part of Revere Electric Supply), welcomed the distributors from her home region with a look at three critical issues she has made the focus of her term: distributors’ need to highlight their role in the market as the “bank of distribution” and to better understand the financial impact of providing credit to customers; special pricing contracts with manufacturers and the need to standardize and streamline the process to lower costs; and the expansion of IDEA’s Industry Data Warehouse to include 43 fields of data needed to support e-commerce.

Keynote speaker Paul DePodesta of “Moneyball” fame was well-received as he shared his experience helping Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s compete against larger and better-funded competitors by using data to rethink all the metrics by which performance is measured.

The 2016 South Central region conference will be at the Red Rock Casino in Las Vegas, Nev., Feb. 24-26.