• E-NEWSLETTER SUBSCRIPTIONS
  • EW DIGITAL EDITION
  • ADVERTISE

    • Latest from Market Planning Guide

    © Endeavor Business Media
    ew_mpg_image_2025_de
    © Endeavor Business Media
    ew_mpg_image_2025_de

    Sponsored

    © Endeavor Business Media
    673e307102ab42a29370e363 Ew Mpg Image 2025 De
    1. Data & Training
    2. Market Planning Guide

    East North Central Region Market Potential

    Nov. 26, 2024
    Here's the data for Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio & Wisconsin.

    While state-level sales potential is growing at slow pace in the East North Central Region, the Columbus, OH, MSA: Indianapolis-Carmel-Anderson, IN, MSA: and Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI MSA, are enjoying +5% growth over last year, according to EW’s estimates. Topping all metros in this region is the Lansing-East Lansing, MI, MSA, which saw its sales potential grow +7% to $216 million.


    The East North Central Region may have been called America’s Rust Belt for many years, but  that moniker may have to be changed to the Heartland of America Data Center Belt, because of all the new facilities being built and on the drawing boards. EW’s editors found $25 billion worth of data center projects in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio in various stages of completion and planning. The largest data center project is the $11-billion campus that Amazon Web Services is building in New Carlisle, IN. Amazon also said in a Sept. 2023 announcement that it plans to build five data centers in New Albany, OH, with a total construction value of $3.5 billion.


    While the wave of data center construction is indeed impressive, it’s by no means the only projects being built in this region. We found 19 projects valued at $1 billion in the pipeline, including the $4.5- billion Eli Lilly R&D and Manufacturing Campus in Lebanon, IN; the $3.87-billion tech facility Purdue University & South Korea's SK Hynix plan to build in West Lafayette, IN; the $3.5-billion training complex the NBA Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team is building in Cleveland, OH: and the $3-billion Henry Ford Health hospital that will be built in Detroit.

     

     

     

     

     

     

    HOW TO USE THE DATA IN THE MARKET PLANNING GUIDE

    The late Andrea Herbert, former chief editor of Electrical Wholesaling, launched the Market Planning Guide more than 40 years ago. She won several national editorial awards for her efforts with the Market Planning Guide, including the Jesse H. Neal Award, the business press’ highest honor.
    She wanted the Market Planning Guide to be a practical tool for salespeople and managers at distributors, manufacturers and independent manufacturers’ reps, and her thoughts on how to use it still ring true today:

    • Determine market share & penetration.


    • Evaluate branch performance and decide which local market areas may support new branches.


    • Determine the areas with the greatest sales potential so you can concentrate your salespeople’s efforts in the most productive directions.


    • Keep on top of changes in the market area (new residential development, large construction projects in the pipeline & population shifts).


    • Direct advertising and promotion to the places where it will have the most impact.


    • Explain to suppliers what they can expect from you in the way of market coverage.


    • Verify or challenge what suppliers expect from you in sales.


    • Set sales quotas for salespeople, territories or product lines.


    • Calculate the number of salespeople needed to cover an area.


    • Compare how well salespeople in different territories are doing with the same product on the basis of market potential.


    • Back up intuition.

    WHERE TO FIND THE 2025 DATA AT WWW.EWWEB.COM

    All of the 2025 Market Planning Guide data can be found by clicking on “2025 Market Planning Guide” in the menu running in the green bar at the top of the home page. Here are some quick links to the regional sale data  and other tools for market planning:


    New England Region: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire & Vermont

     

    Middle Atlantic Region: New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania

     

    South Atlantic Region: Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia

     

    East North Central Region: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin

     

    West North Central Region: Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota

     

    East South Central Region: Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi & Tennessee

     

    West South Central Region: Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma & Texas

     

    Mountain Region: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada & Wyoming

     

    Pacific Region: Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon & Washington

     

    OTHER REALLY USEFUL DATA

    In addition to breaking out our national and regional sales potential estimates, the 2025 Market Planning Guide also offers some other great local data that will help offer a clearer picture of the electrical opportunities available: electrical contractor and industrial employment,  population growth, construction projects worth at least $100 million in total construction value and building permits.

    Employment Data

    You can use use this employment data with EW's sales-per-employee estimates for electrical contractors of $78,775 per employee and industrial customers of $2,650 per employee to develop sales potential estimates at the local and state level.

     

    Population Change (2022-2023 and 2020-2023)

    Following population trends is a quick-and-easy way of gauging a market’s local economy. If a market is gaining or losing residents, it obviously affects the tax base, enrollments counts and schools and the need for additional construction for service industries. In our presentation of the U.S. Census Dept.’s 2023 data at the MSA and state level, we map out  new-residents-by-day data, which is calculated with the number of folks moving into or out of a local market. It’s a simple calculation that highlights population growth in a fun and easy-to-view manner.

     

    Construction Projects

    Electrical work typically accounts for roughly 10% of total construction value of a project, and the construction projects highlighted here offer a sense of the project mix available in a given state or region.  Our construction project data was gathered through Oct. 2024. Electrical Marketing newsletter updates its construction project database each quarter, and those updates can be downloaded in a spreadsheet as part of a $99 subscription. Our decision to only include the projects we find of $100 million of more in total contract value is based totally on  the bandwidth of the EW staff; we realize that many smaller projects can be even more profitable than larger jobs.

     

    Building Permits

    Available monthly from the U.S. Census Bureau on an MSA, state and national level, building permits are a leading indicator of future residential construction because homebuilders typically don’t invest in a permit until they are serious about breaking ground. Permit data is also an early indicator of future nonresidential construction in a local market, because once residential developments go in, the constructions of stores, light commercial and other projects typically follows.

     

     

    About the Author

    Jim Lucy | Editor-in-Chief

    Over the past 30-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).

    Email

    Continue Reading

    Sponsored Recommendations