STATE ELECTRIC: THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY FOR THE FUTURE

NOVEMBER 5, 2008

The year was 1952.

Harry Truman was President. A young Elizabeth II became Queen of England when her father died. Dictator Joe Stalin continued to hold the Soviet Union in his iron grip.

The first Holiday Inn opened its doors. The "Today" show premiered on NBC television. (Less than a third of the nation’s families had TV sets.) Moviegoers were flocking to theaters to see Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen. The very few computers then at work weighed more than two tons each and filled a large room. Small transistor radios, newly introduced to the market, were everywhere, selling so fast that stores couldn’t keep them in stock.

You could buy a house for $9,000. At your neighborhood service station, you could have the attendant fill your tank and then you’d get change back from the $5 bill you handed him. He’d also clean your windshield and check your tires.

And in West Virginia the year 1952 say a young man boldly start a new business venture. Art Weisberg — recently arrived in the state from his native Brooklyn — loaded his pickup truck with some light bulbs, extension cords and fuses and then hit the road, hoping to sell his merchandise to some of the "mom and pop" grocery and hardware stores that were so common then, before the advent of the discount chains.

Those first years were rough, but Weisberg refused to give up. He kept plugging away. And he not only preserved, he prospered. Over the years, the modest business venture that Weisberg named State Electric Supply Co. has evolved into on one of the nation’s largest and best-known electrical distributors, one with more than 700 employees at 40 branch locations in five states.

Weisberg built State Electric around the idea that providing the customer with just a product wasn’t enough.

"Beyond quality products and competitive prices," he says, "the thing that would separate our company from others was service. We believe that making an extra effort to provide customers with what they need, when they need it, will keep them happy and coming back."

Happy customers have been coming back to State Electric for 56 years and during that time, the company has expanded from one location to today’s far-flung network of locations in West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia and North Carolina.

But State Electric has done much more than just expand its geographic reach. It’s also dramatically expanded the products and services it offers its customers.

One of the keys to the success of State Electric has been its ability to appeal to an ever-broader base of customers. In keeping with this proven strategy of diversification, State Electric created the Automation Products Group in 1991. The group’s engineering and product specialists provide technical support to customers utilizing products associated with industrial process automation.

Meeting customer expectations in the rapidly changing automation products field is no easy task. The field is driven by technology, including both hardware and software. It’s been estimated that the complexity and the processing power of automation products increase by a factor of 10 every three years. With that in mind, technical support has become paramount to customers operating critical systems. Providing that support is the goal of State Electric’s Automation Products Group.

To meet this goal, a state-of-the-art training facility in Huntington is extensively utilized. Operational equipment is available for customer demonstration and evaluation. A fully equipped laboratory is used to test and evaluate new products (both hardware and software) to ensure that their operating characteristics are thoroughly understood.

Premature obsolescence can be a major problem for automation products. State Electric carefully screens its suppliers to ensure continued support throughout the application life of the product.

In addition to providing technical assistance to our customers, State Electric also provides a wide variety of value-added services. To minimize cost and risk we work closely with local systems integrators and contractors in generating requirements and specifying appropriate equipment for projects.

Much has changed in the world since 1952.

If you want to watch The African Queen tonight, all you have to do is slip a disc in your DVD player and enjoy it on your big-screen TV. Computers are commonplace and so small you may have one in your pocket or purse as you read this. The transistor radio was replaced by the eight-track tape, which gave way to the cassette recorder. And now, of course, the I-pod is making the cassette recorder an antique. And, of course, Americans will never again see $9,000 houses or 20-cent gasoline.

Fortunately, however, some things haven’t changed — and never will. From the day Art Weisberg hit the road with his first truckload of merchandise, the watchword at State Electric has been "Customer Focused, Quality Driven."

And that’s equally true whether you’re talking about a simple package of light bulbs or the most sophisticated of automation products.