First published in 2017, Electrical Marketing’s Electrical Product Sales Potential Data has become some of the most popular market data we have ever published. EM’s Electrical Price Index (EPI), the monthly updates of electrical product pricing trends prepared for the newsletter by IHS Markit, remains the keystone of our data offering, but the feedback we are receiving on our product sales data indicate that it’s quite popular and that the product category percentages are spot on.
Electrical Marketing subscribers have exclusive access to national, regional and state annual sales forecasts for 17 electrical product categories, including lighting equipment; distribution equipment & switchgear; circuit protection equipment; boxes and enclosures; wiring devices, utility products and VDV (voice-data-video) equipment. The data in the table below doesn’t break out lamp sales between traditional lamps (incandescent, fluorescent, metal-halide, etc.) and LEDs, but if you are interested in this product category, the split is roughly 3% for LEDs and just over 2% for traditional lamps.
When you look at this data, it’s interesting to note that several core product areas attract an awful lot of the typical full-line electrical distributor’s inventory investment. Together, lighting (roughly 25%), wire and cable (13.3%), distribution equipment/switchgear (13.3%) and conduit & related fittings and accessories (8.6%) account for about 46% of all the products they stock.
The data has been updated with 2019 sales forecasts from EW’s Market Planning Guide (see regional forecasts in table below) and product mix data submitted by more than 120 full-line Top 200 electrical distributors for surveys conducted in 2015 and 2016. Because of space considerations, this week’s print issue just highlights regional data; state-level estimates for this data is online to at www.electricalmarketing.com.
When Electrical Marketing first launched this data, our editors only released it at the national and regional level. We decided to drill down to the state level after developing calculations on the percent of business that each state contributed to the national electrical market. These percent-of-market calculations are based on about 10 different economic indicators, including contractor and manufacturing employment, gross state product and population.
Our Electrical Product Potential data is a key element of Electrical Marketing’s expanded focus on providing subscribers with the local market data and related economic data they will need to analyze new growth opportunities and benchmark existing sales on a regional basis and by product category.
Also available online www.electricalmarketing.com are our estimates for electrical sales potential at the state, county and MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area) level and a database on the largest new construction projects. This data gives Electrical Marketing subscribers exclusive resources previously unavailable in the industry.