Mars Electric Inc. has been serving the northeast Ohio area’s electrical needs for 66 years. To maintain its legacy, the business has always been ready to adapt to change.
The Doris family initially started the company to serve residential customers, but grew the business over the years to include commercial and industrial contractors in its customer base.
“We’ve always had really busy counters and serviced the small-to-mediumsized contractors who rely on us to be their warehouse for inventory,” said Michael Doris, executive vice president of Mars Electric. “We’ve expanded over time to servicing the biggest projects in town—commercial or industrial—we are doing it all.” Contractors currently make up 70 percent of Mars Electric’s customer mix. The company also has a lighting showroom open to designers and the general public.
Serving more contractors has meant taking on tasks contractors used to do themselves, such as storage, delivery and inventory. “A lot of contractors used to have warehouses with lots of people working in them, and it’s up to the distributor now to do that,” said Doris. “Instead of just selling, we’ve become a service business.”
Labor shortages are also influencing how Mars Electric serves clients. “We’re hearing stories of customers turning down work because they don’t have the people to do it,” said Doris. “Anything we can do from a service aspect, such as finding labor-saving products for faster installations, to help them save time is a value-add.”
One of Mars Electric’s value-added services relies on vendor managed inventory (VMI). Michael’s brother, Andrew, manages the company’s VMI business. VMI is an app-based system integrated into Mars’ business management software that monitors a customer’s inventory in real time so Mars knows what products to replenish and when.
“In our minds, it’s all about how we help our customers save time and money to make their projects more successful,” said Doris. “If you asked us five or 10 years ago if we would be doing this much VMI, we would’ve said no, but we are and we are constantly looking for the next customer service tool.”
Making more deliveries than ever before, Mars also seeks to improve logistics and its fleet of vehicles. “We have a truck with a crane, so we can offload product to a second floor or into a basement,” said Mark Doris, president of Mars. “The contractors want us to make their job easier and the vendors are trying to make products and services to assist in this goal.”
Mark entered the family-owned business when his parents, Rebecca and Sam, shifted their focus from residential customers to the contractor market to stay viable amid the proliferation of big-box stores in the late 1970s to early 1980s. His son, Michael, is part of the third generation of the family involved in the business. Michael takes care of the day-to-day operations while CEO Fran Doris handles strategic planning and leadership at Mars, which is now a certified woman-owned business enterprise.
In three generations, the company has grown from 10 employees to 155 employees and 12 regional locations. Mars recently tripled its warehouse space by moving its headquarters and distribution center into a new 108,000-square-foot facility in Mayfield Village and converting its former building into a branch location.
Mars is an acronym for Mark, Alan, Rebecca and Sam. When Michael married a woman named Robyn and his brother Andrew married a woman named Samantha, they reproduced the acronym.
IMARK membership helps the Doris family keep business strong. Employees take advantage of IMARK University training courses and the owners attend IMARK Showcase and the annual meetings to network with other IMARK members and strengthen business partnerships with IMARK suppliers. “We always come away with ideas to improve our business,” said Michael.
For more information about Mars Electric Inc., visit mars-electric.com.
