Don't let your company go uncounted in EW's annual listing.

The June 1999 issue of Electrical Wholesaling magazine will feature "The Industry's 250 Biggest"-an annual ranking by size of distributors of electrical products. This ranking is studied and saved by manufacturers, distributors, acquirers, analysts and investors.

Being included on the 250 Biggest brings a company considerable prestige, much as making the Fortune 500 does for U.S. businesses in general. I know a distributor who made it part of his strategic plans to reach the 250 Biggest. The surveys I use to gather the data for this ranking are now in the mail to firms that previously appeared on this list and to others that my research indicates should be considered for ranking.

Finding companies to survey and putting together this listing are more art than science. The determination of a firm's size for ranking is based primarily on dollar sales of electrical products and (very) secondarily on number of employees. The sales data we publish in EW's June issue comes exclusively from a distributorship's response to this survey, signed by one of its officers. If a distributor does not provide its previous year (for the upcoming listing, 1998) dollar sales and I feel, on the basis of past history and other source material, that a firm should be ranked, then I must resort to estimating-and that might not do a distributorship justice.

Only a handful of electrical distributor companies trade publicly, so most sales and financial data remains private. I use whatever publicly available data I can find as a proxy-like employee count and branch numbers-to select distributorships to survey.

I would like to be sending surveys to more of you who qualify. I always welcome nominations from distributors, as well as from manufacturers and reps who believe a certain firm should be on the list. This year, I am looking for electrical distributorships that had $23 million or more in 1998 sales as candidates for listing.

The sales number represents "electrical wholesale," and I include those types of products that a typical distributor of electrical products handles, including electronic wire and cable, utility products, lighting products sold at retail through lighting showrooms, automation products and datacom equipment. I do, however, exclude sales from manufacturing, motor repair, plumbing supplies and the like if a distributorship has such operations.

Some distributors mistakenly believe if they report their sales to another party, such as to associations, credit-reporting services or research firms, that automatically EW becomes aware of it. That's not the case, because these groups keep this information confidential. EW is independent of any association or other entity to which you may have already reported 1998 sales; the sales volumes on the 250 Biggest listing come from your survey responses to us.

I can't rank a company accurately without a sales figure. As an alternative, you can join the companies that give me sales data on a confidential basis; I use that information to rank them, but do not publish the figure. I am the only person who sees the survey forms returned to my Montclair, N.J., post office box or fax number; the respondent simply writes "Confidential" next to the sales figure.

I am most happy to accept nominations and provide survey forms. I can be reached via e-mail at andreaherbert@compuserve.com, by telephone at 973-509-0780 (phone and fax), or by mail at P.O. Box 43044, Upper Montclair, N.J. 07043.

I expect to see many changes in this year's listing. For that reason, I need to hear from you by mid-April. Your response will assure that the ranking is accurate and reliable.

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