Acuity Brands Announces Management Changes, Acquires The Luminaires Group
Acuity Brands Inc. appointed Richard K. Reece as president of the company. He was formerly executive vice president and chief financial officer (CFO) of Acuity Brands Inc. Reece assumes responsibility for the commercial operations of the company, including all product creation activities.
Karen J. Holcom was promoted to senior vice president and CFO of Acuity Brands Inc. She has been with the company for 21 years and has held various positions during her tenure, including controller and interim CFO. Holcom most recently served as senior vice president leading the areas of finance and associate engagement.
Laurent J. Vernerey stepped down from his position as executive vice president of Acuity Brands Inc. and president of Acuity Technology Group. Going forward, he will serve in the newly-created position of strategic business development executive. Vernerey’s new position will entail fewer responsibilities and a reduced time commitment, which he requested in order to devote more time to his family.
In other company news, Acuity recently announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Acuity Brands Lighting Inc., acquired all of the equity interests of The Luminaires Group (TLG), a leading provider of specification-grade luminaires for commercial, institutional, hospitality and municipal markets, which complements the company’s current and dynamic lighting portfolio. TLG’s indoor and outdoor lighting fixtures are marketed to architects, landscape architects, interior designers and engineers through five niche lighting brands: a-light, Cyclone, Eureka, Luminaire LED and Luminis.
TLG generates annual sales of approximately $100 million and employs more than 350 associates located across five locations in the United States and Canada.
For more information, visit acuitybrands.com.
Arlington Appoints Business Development Manager
Arlington Industries has appointed Dave Welsh to the newly-created position of business development manager.
Welsh will visit key contractors, projects and job sites to review installation issues and determine potential solutions as the basis for new product ideas by Arlington’s product development team.
Welsh is a master electrician. He was the chief electrical inspector for four areas in Michigan. At the same time, he was the program coordinator and instructor for the electrical technology program at Kalamazoo Valley Community College.
For the past 20 years, Welsh has served as a sales representative, a sales engineer, a product manager and in various other sales management roles of increasing responsibility at Hubbell Wiring Devices, Eaton and Siemens. He holds several patents and received his BBA from Western Michigan University in 1990.
For more information, visit aifittings.com.
Atkore Appoints VP, Business Development and Strategy
Atkore International appointed John Stampfel to vice president of business development and strategy. He succeeds Mark Lamps, who was promoted to the role of president of Atkore’s Mechanical Products and Solutions business earlier this year.
Stampfel reports directly to Bill Waltz, president and CEO of Atkore and will be responsible for developing corporate strategies focused on key business opportunities, including acquisitions, strategic alliances and other capital deployment initiatives.
With a 28-year career at Eaton, Stampfel held a broad range of roles with increasing responsibility in sales, marketing, operations, service, and general management. Most recently, he held the role of vice president of innovation and strategy for the electrical systems and services group of Eaton.
For more information, visit atkore.com.
CANTEX Names New President, VP of Sales, Marketing
CANTEX Inc. in Fort Worth, Texas has named Dave Merker, former vice president of sales and marketing for CANTEX, president of CANTEX. Merker succeeds Don Wirtanen as president after Wirtanen’s untimely passing in July.
The company also appointed Dave Milius to the role of vice president of sales and marketing. Milius brings more than 24 years of electrical distribution sales leadership experience to CANTEX.
Merker’s extensive sales and management experience in the electrical distribution industry, including 28 years at CANTEX, make him ideally suited to lead CANTEX. Moreover, Merker’s ability to implement and manage business strategies to meet evolving market demands make him the best person to lead CANTEX into the next decade.
Prior to accepting his new position at CANTEX, Milius served as vice president of national distribution for Signify, formerly North American Philips Lighting. Some of his other sales leadership roles with North American Philips Lighting included the following: key accounts director, director of distributor sales, senior key accounts manager, regional sales manager and national account manager.
For more information, visit cantexinc.com.
Ideal’s Chairman, CEO to Retire, Successor Named
Jim James, chairman and CEO of Ideal Industries Inc., has announced he will retire on Jan. 31, 2020. Steve Henn, a group president from Illinois Tool Works (ITW) will succeed James as CEO. Meghan Juday, a fourth-generation family executive, will become the chairman of the 103-year old family company on Feb. 1, 2020 when James retires.
Henn joins IDEAL from ITW where he was group president of industrial equipment and plastics, the largest platform within the $2 billion specialty products segment. The platform was made up of six divisions with more than 3,000 employees, operating more than 30 facilities, serving multiple markets in 15 countries. Prior to that, Henn built a roughly $600 million business and became group president of ITW’s global packaging solutions platform.
For more information, visit idealindustries.com.
Minerallac Goes Green with New Solar Farm
Minerallac Co. installed a new 352 kW ground-mounted solar array outside of its Hampshire, Illinois headquarters to provide 100% solar power for the entire facility. With more than 1,000 solar modules, this is the first ground-based solar array in the county and also the largest.
“The best part of this project was the ability to partner with one of the oldest and most respected electrical contractors in the area. Minerallac Co. is celebrating our 125th anniversary in 2019 and we welcomed the opportunity to partner with a contractor whose history is almost as long as ours,” said Jim Hlavacek, Minerallac president.
State Sen. Don DeWitte and State Rep. Dan Ugaste attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony on July 10 and praised the project.
For more information, visit minerallac.com.
NSi Industries Acquires Bridgeport Fittings
NSi Industries LLC in Huntersville, North Carolina has
acquired electrical products manufacturer Bridgeport Fittings Inc., a Stratford, Connecticut-based market leader of American-made electrical fittings for cable and conduit installations. The acquisition supplements NSi’s strong organic growth and its ability to penetrate important vertical industries and markets, while offering one of the broadest product, service and solution portfolios serving the electrical marketplace.
Bridgeport Fittings manufactures high-quality, high-performing electrical fittings including couplings, conduit bodies, transition fittings, bushings, solar connectors and more. Bridgeport Fittings employs approximately 200 people and will continue to operate out of Stratford.
In the coming weeks and months, NSi will evaluate and work with distributor and channel selling partners to help guide how to best integrate Bridgeport with NSi to maximize operational synergies.
For more information, visit nsiindustries.com.
OmniCable Announces Company Sale, Promotions
OmniCable was acquired by a subsidiary of Dot Holdings Co. (DHC), which is owned by Dot Family Holdings (DFH), and joins its portfolio of companies.
DFH is focused exclusively on acquiring leading middlemarket distribution companies with a special interest in master/two-step distribution and any national distribution models. DFH’s approach to acquiring and holding companies for the long term and investing for growth made it an ideal partner for OmniCable.
OmniCable will continue to operate as usual with no changes to the company’s organizational structure, products, services and mission. OmniCable continues to be the premier redistributor of wire and cable, electrical products and value-added services for electrical distributors in the United States and Canada.
The company also promoted Gus White to Atlanta sales manager and Greg Donadio to Los Angeles sales manager.
White is responsible for the sales growth, onboarding and training of the Atlanta branch’s new sales staff. He joined the company in 2013 as an account manager at OmniCable’s Charlotte branch.
Donadio is responsible for the sales growth, onboarding and training of the Los Angeles branch’s new sales staff. He joined Omni- Cable in 2014 as an account manager at OmniCable’s Los Angeles branch.
For more information, visit omnicable.com.
SATCO Appoints Director of Contract, Pricing
SATCO Products Inc. named Edgard Pedrazas as director of contract and pricing. His responsibilities will include managing profitability across several different verticals of Satco/Nuvo businesses.
Pedrazas brings more than 10 years of experience in the lighting industry. He previously held multiple positions at Ledvance, from pricing and leading sales plan designs to export sales and product management. Pedrazas’ proven track record makes him the perfect fit for this position.
For more information, visit satco.com.
Southwire Introduces New Careers Site, Employee Brand
Southwire has always believed that its employees are what make the company special. In that spirit, Southwire has launched a new careers website, led by a refreshed employee brand that focuses on this very point of pride— fittingly named The People Behind the Power™.
The all-new careers.southwire.com has a user-friendly interface that provides access to open job opportunities, career stories and additional information about the company’s culture, total rewards and strategy.
The People Behind The Power™ initiative is intended to reach Southwire’s future workforce and provide a rally cry for current employees. Through this launch, Southwire’s people have an outlet to connect with one another by telling their stories and taking part in all of the opportunities the company provides to support them throughout their careers.
For more information, visit careers.southwire.com.
United Electric, nVent, Springfield Electric Endorse NEMRA POS Standards
Springfield Electric, a leading Midwest regional distributor serving Illinois, western Indiana, Missouri and Iowa; United Electric, a leading mid-Atlantic distributor serving contractor and industrial facilities in southern New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and the District of Columbia; and nVent, a leading electrical manufacturer to many distributors representing brands such as Hoffman, Erico, Caddy and Raychem, have endorsed NEMRA’s Point of Sale (POS) Minimum Reporting Standards.
While Springfield has provided suppliers with POS information, it recognizes the increased importance of local support as it grows.
“We are committed to, and firmly believe in, the value of local NEMRA representation, and that the local representative should be compensated for what they sell in support of Springfield Electric in their assigned territories,” Mark Barthel, president of Springfield Electric, said. “We support the local independent representations as true partners of Springfield Electric and NEMRA as a key member association in the industry.”
“Endorsing, and more importantly using, the NEMRA POS standards makes sense,” George Vorwick, president and CEO of United Electric and current chairman of NAED, said. “Our reps deserve to be appropriately compensated for the work they do to support us and the NEMRA standards help us streamline reporting processes, enabling our relationships with our suppliers to be more transparent, productive and efficient. One reporting process will enable us to share this information more readily with our key suppliers.”
“We’re also looking forward to participating with suppliers who are participating in NEMRA’s POS Connection, which will enable us to send one file to a centralized source for dissemination of the information to our suppliers,” Vorwick said. “This was a great idea and will help us simplify the POS process.”
Jasneet Kaur, vice president of channel excellence for nVent, said, “We recognize that the role of the rep is critical to generating demand and serving our distributors. It is important that our independent sales representatives be compensated accurately and appropriately. Adopting the NEMRA standards helps us standardize our processes so that we can improve how we serve our distributors and sales agents. With distribution adopting the NEMRA standards, it was important that we take this next step. Our adoption reaffirms our commitment to our sales agents.”
For more information about Springfield Electric, visit springfieldelectric.com. For more information about United Electric, visit unitedelectric.com. For more information about nVent, visit nVent.com.
For more information on NEMRA’s POS initiative, visit nemra.org/point-sale-initiative.