The Electrical Marketplace

Tom Haggerty in Florida has introduced a well-written blog in conjunction with his site electricalmarketplace.com. This posting in March gives some insights into his business and blog:

Is your Business Changing for 2008?
Posted By Tom Haggerty At 10:50 PM • Comments (0)

My name is Tom Haggerty and I am the owner of Electrical Marketplace. If you’ve had a chance to navigate through our website you will see that we are a large lighting and electrical supplier in Pompano Beach, FL.

I started my company in 2002 with the crazy notion that electrical contractors would buy electrical and lighting equipment online in the comfort of their homes and offices and eventually directly from the jobsite. Thanks to the dedication and hard work from our team of employees this concept has been working for hundreds of electrical contractors and maintaince personnel nationwide.

It was during my 13 year career at General Electric that I learned firsthand that businesses must operate in a global economy and those companies that could become a low cost provider of their products and maintain product quality were winning the game. Purchasing managers at GE were trained on how to utilize the internet to identify global low cost producers of key materials. As an innovator in global sourcing techniques, GE had an enormous competitive advantage in the marketplace. That experience taught me that all that buyers really needed to have was enough information to be sure that the product that they were going to buy online was going to be of high quality, it would be shipped quickly, and the cost savings would justify the planning of materials deliveries to coincide with the needs of the job.

It was on that concept that Electrical Marketplace was founded.

These days I still spend a good portion of each day talking to electrical contractors around the country and getting a sense of what is happening in their local construction markets. There is no question that our national construction forecast is weak and some areas of the country and markets are getting hit particularly hard. I have spoken with large residential contractors in areas of the country that were booming two years ago that today have downsized huge percentages of their workforce. Smaller contractors face a different challenge and find that they must adapt to the changing construction climate.

In order to adjust your business to this 2008 construction environment it is necessary to understand where the construction dollars are flowing and prepare your business to thrive. For many of our customers that has meant exploring ways to capitalize on growth opportunities with lighting retrofits, commercial and industrial construction, and remodeling.

So the question that I would like to put out is simply this…

What (if anything) is your company doing differently in 2008 to maintain or grow profitability?

The question is wise. And, with a definite lack of modesty, the answers are in this blog.