Booth traffic during the first two days of the NECA 2025 trade show in Chicago, IL, seemed solid, with many NECA electrical contractors and apprentices enjoying the hands-on opportunities to test out labor-saving electrical products and seeing new energy-saving electrical products. Exhibitors were also eager to showcase electrical products for data center projects, including grounding and bonding products, lugs, connectors, conduit and wire and cable. Scott Pachan, executive VP of sales and marketing for Champion Fiberglass, said the demand for his company’s fiberglass conduit for data center projects has been enormous and that he always has to remind his younger salespeople that the current data center market is a once-in-a-career type of sales opportunity, and that they should make the most of it while so many data center projects are in the pipeline.
One of the newer technologies on the show floor was Class 4 fault managed power. Southwire exhibited products from Voltserver, a developer of digital electricity products and systems that it invested in back in 2023. Panduit demonstrated its Fault Managed Power System (FMPS) in its booth, which takes standard AC power and converts it to DC. The company says its FMPS system can provide “significant power over long distances to remote equipment,” and can offer dramatic savings in job materials and installation time because it does not have to be installed in conduit or utilize junction boxes or panels. According to company literature, the Panduit FMPS is a Class 4 power system complies with the new UL 1400-1 Standard for a safer, more reliable and easy-to-install power delivery system that provides substantial time and cost savings.
Some of the product demonstration areas that seemed to be attracting the most attention at NECA 2025 included two conduit bending demos, one at Zekelman’s demonstration area that showed off a huge bender that could handle some of the company’s largest diameter conduit, and another at the Milwaukee tool booth that promoted the company’s battery-powered benders.
While booth traffic over the weekend at NECA 2025 was good, the show as a whole seemed slightly smaller than over the past few years. There did not seem to be quite as many vendors of business software for procurement, estimating or accounting as in San Diego last year, or in Philadelphia in 2023. And while the national and several of the larger regional electrical distributors had a strong presence at this year’s show, it seemed like there were not as many booths for local independent electrical distributors as in years past.
About the Author
Jim Lucy
Editor-in-Chief
Over the past 40-plus years, hundreds of Jim’s articles have been published in Electrical Wholesaling and Electrical Marketing newsletter on topics such as the impact of amazonsupply.com and other new competitors on the electrical market’s channels of distribution, energy-efficient lighting and renewables, and local market economics. In addition to his published work, Jim regularly gives presentations on these topics to C-suite executives, industry groups and investment analysts.
He recently launched a new subscription-based data product for Electrical Marketing that offers electrical sales potential estimates and related market data for more than 300 metropolitan areas, and in 1999 he published his first book, “The Electrical Marketer’s Survival Guide” for electrical industry executives looking for an overview of key market trends.
While managing Electrical Wholesaling’s editorial operations, Jim and the publication’s staff won several Jesse H. Neal awards for editorial excellence, the highest honor in the business press, and numerous national and regional awards from the American Society of Business Press Editors. He has a master’s degree in Communications and a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, N.J. (now Rowan University).