NAED Annual report from San Francisco

April 28, 2014
Two popular speakers at the conference were Brad Stone, author of “The Everything Store,” a book about the rise of amazon.com, offered some intriguing insights into the company that Jeff Bezos built, and David Pogue, a popular writer on personal technology who won wide acclaim for his reviews in the New York Times of new digital tools such as smartphones, cameras and tablets. Pogue now writes for Yahoo.com. The New Product Introduction panel discussion was standing-room only. Moderated by TED magazine publisher Scott Costa, the panel explored a wide range of challenges in the introduction of new products in the electrical market. On the panel were Don Ambrose, national sales manager Arlington Industries; Chris Breslin, senior vice president/COO, Crescent Electric Supply; Michael Garner, vice president of sales for Cupertino Electric (a large Bay Area electrical contractor; John Hoffman, executive, V.P., sales and market development, Legrand; and Erin Koester, Van Meter Inc.  

The National Association of Electrical Distributors (NAED) returned to one of its more popular venues in San Francisco, April 26-28. The meeting agenda offered some dynamic speakers and a popular panel discussion on new product introductions, but overall attendance and the buzz in the lobby seemed much lighter than past annual conferences. Attendees from roughly 108 electrical distributors or divisions of larger electrical distributors and 97 electrical manufacturers or divisions of larger vendors were on the NAED registration list.

Two popular speakers at the conference were Brad Stone, author of “The Everything Store,” a book about the rise of amazon.com, who offered some intriguing insights into the company that Jeff Bezos built, and David Pogue, a popular writer on personal technology who won wide acclaim for his reviews in the New York Times of new digital tools such as smartphones, cameras and tablets. Pogue now writes for Yahoo.com. Dr. Donald Leavens, vice president and chief economist for the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, Washington, D.C., also gave a good top-level review of the economic conditions shaping the electrical market.

While these sessions were not particularly well-attended, the New Product Introduction panel discussion was standing-room only. Moderated by TED magazine publisher Scott Costa, the panel explored a wide range of challenges related to the introduction of new products in the electrical market. On the panel were Don Ambrose, national sales manager Arlington Industries; Chris Breslin, senior vice president/COO, Crescent Electric Supply; Michael Garner, vice president of sales for Cupertino Electric (a large Bay Area electrical contractor; John Hoffman, executive, V.P., sales and market development, Legrand; and Erin Koester, Van Meter Inc.  The panel did a great job of exploring how manufacturers can do a better job of promoting the labor-saving capabilities of new products and in telling other manufacturer and distributor attendees how they can best present new products to electrical contractors and other end users.