Opportunities sometimes come disguised as problems. Wrigley Field, home of Chicago’s beloved Cubs, is going through a $575 million renovation. During the off-season, several electrical contractors were working on part of the project to get it done before Opening Day.
Chris Paddock, branch manager of Crescent Electric Supply Co.’s Elk Grove Village, Ill., branch, was happy to get a call on Feb. 12 from ABCO Electric for a $60,000 XHHW wire order. The challenge would be getting it to the customer’s shop in time for a weekend installation at Wrigley Field.
A huge problem hit days before the deadline. The wire and cable company where Paddock placed the order said the wire he ordered got flagged for quality issues, and they would not be able to deliver replacement product to ABCO by Feb. 20. This was a hard deadline — and it was only three days away. Any delays might mean the ballpark wouldn’t be ready for the Cubs’ home opener against the Cincinnati Reds on April 11.
On the evening of Wednesday, Feb. 17, Paddock called Bruce Baldwin, Service Wire business development manager, after-hours to see if the company could get a rush order to him of 600MCM XHHW-2 (Service Wire’s 600V single copper conductor, stranded and insulated with chemically cross-linked polyethylene).
Baldwin was on the road in North Dakota when he got the call, and Service Wire’s main facility in Culloden, W. Va., had already closed for the day. But he got through to support personnel at Service Wire’s Arizona location, who were able to check on their computer and see that Service Wire’s Culloden factory had just manufactured that cable in the right colors and had not yet put it in inventory. They put a hold on that inventory and Service Wire was able to cut the cable the next day and ship it on time to meet ABCO’s Friday, Feb. 19 deadline. Baldwin says an interesting twist to the story is that Service Wire had only recently started manufacturing that cable in those colors.
Paddock said in an e-mail to Electrical Wholesaling that Service Wire was the only company that was able to solve his problem. “We were scrambling,” he said. “We contacted every wire supplier we knew and no one could help us meet that deadline except Service Wire. On Thursday, Feb. 18, Service Wire was able to manufacture, cut and ship the wire same day out of their West Virginia facility. The wire arrived in Elk Grove on Friday, Feb. 19th at 11:22 a.m. We were able to cut, put it on the compartmentalized reels and deliver it that afternoon, and the contractor was extremely pleased with our service.”
Service Wire is proud of how it handles emergency requests like the Wrigley job, and the company says that as customer demands change, so does its stock inventory. The company now stock red, white and blue in all sizes. “This was just one of the many lessons we are constantly learning from our customers,” a company spokesperson said.