As editors of Electrical Wholesaling, we get to report on all sorts of different types of news. Some days the first story that comes across our desks is a blockbuster merger or acquisition. Other times, we uncover a new technological development with the potential for dramatic impact on the electrical market. Part of the fun that comes with our jobs is analyzing the potential impact of these stories on our readers and deciding how much weight to give them.
Over the past two or three years, we have noticed some manufacturers are in the news much more than others. While these companies often hit the headlines because of big acquisition or a major executive move in the C-suite, more often than not the story is about how a company is dealing with one of five key trends that Electrical Wholesaling’s editors believe are utterly changing the electrical wholesaling industry as we know it:
- The lighting transformation to LEDs
- The energy revolution
- The evolving power grid
- Our more-connected world
- Market opportunities with the new logistics of moving products through more-modern ports, intermodal facilities and rail lines
We have written quite a bit about these megatrends over the past few years in Electrical Wholesaling, and you can find links to these articles in the digital version of this article on www.ewweb.com. On page 16 you will see several “points to ponder” about how your company can deal with key challenges/opportunities within each of these megatrends.
While it’s hard to pull out just 10 companies from the hundreds of manufacturers who sell through electrical distributors, we think you will agree that the companies we have selected are all movers and shakers in their own way. They tend to be very large and have sales of over a billion dollars. Because of space considerations, this issue will include the five electrical manufacturers based overseas, and the Oct. 2014 issue will include our picks for the five domestically-based electrical manufacturers to watch.