One of the most closely read elements of Electrical Wholesaling’s annual Top 200 ranking is its sales-per-employee data, which lists the distributors of electrical supplies with the highest sales-per-employee. It’s a popular metric to watch because it’s an indicator of how efficiently a company operates. As in the past, specialty distributors, which tend to have fewer employees than full-line electrical distributors, dominate the list of distributors as ranked by sales per employee.
The companies in the chart The 50 Distributors with the Highest Sales-Per-Employee were among those respondents that provided both a 2016 sales number and an employee count for publication in this year’s listing. Several other distributors (both full-line and specialists) would have been in this Top 50 listing but asked their sales data be used confidentially.
The average sales-per-employee for the 19 respondents that identified themselves as product specialists and provided both 2016 sales and employee data was $1,554,538. Tops in sales-per-employee in this year’s listing is Tri-State Utility Supply, Marietta, GA with $3,029,412. The company did $103 million in 2016 with 34 employees. The next six companies on the list were also utility specialists: Western United Electric Supply Corp. (WUE), Brighton, CO; CEE US Inc., West Columbia, SC; Rural Electric Supply Cooperative (RESCO), Middleton, WI; TEC Manufacturing & Distribution Services, Georgetown, TX; Gresco Utility Supply Inc., Forsyth, GA; and General Pacific Inc., Fairview, OR.
The average sales per employee for the 98 respondents that identified themselves as full-line electrical distributors was approximately $665,428, up from last year’s figure for full-line distributors of $634,791. International Sales Corp, Miami, FL, had the highest sales-per-employee for a full-line electrical distributor at $1,222,222.
