State Electric Supply Company

State Electric: Customer Focused,
Quality Driven, Constantly Growing

From a humble start more than 50 years ago, State Electric Supply Co. has evolved into one of the nation’s largest and best-known electrical distributors, one with more than 700 employees at 40 branch locations in five states.

That success, says CEO/CFO Clarence Martin, is a result of the company’s determined adherence to its twin goals of being “Customer Focused” and “Quality Driven,” while carefully pursing a strategy of managed growth, either through opening new locations or acquiring existing firms.

Planning is another important element in the State Electric equation, says Martin. “We not only plan well, we execute well. We actualize the plan, put it into practice, and refine it and refine it.” Employee input is very much part of that process, he says. “We go to great lengths to solicit from the ground up. We are not so naïve as to think we have all of the answers here at headquarters.”

Headquarters for the company is a modern office, showroom and warehouse complex in Huntington, at 2010 2nd Avenue, adjacent to Marshall University’s campus.

Computers there keep tabs on the more 60,000 different items State Electric sells to a wide variety of customers, including contractors in the electrical, commercial and utility industries, coal mine operators and even homeowners looking for the latest in decorative lighting.

The company was born in Huntington in 1952, when Art Weisberg loaded his pickup truck with light bulbs, extension cords and fuses and then hit the road, selling to the “mom and pop” grocery and hardware stores that were so numerous back then. Today, the 83-year-old Weisberg remains active in State Electric, serving as its chairman, but has entrusted much of the day-to-day responsibilities to Martin and President/COO John Spoor.

Martin has been with the company for 32 years. Spoor began working at State Electric part time as a Marshall student and became a full-time employee in 1982.

Weisberg built State Electric around the idea that providing the customer with just a product was not 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 55 years and during that time the company has steadily expanded, growing from one location in Huntington to today’s network of locations in West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina.

The company’s latest acquisitions: the Hobert N. Grubb firm in Wytheville, Virginia, and Shepherd Electric Supply Co., which operates six branches in North Carolina. “We anticipate that both these will be profitable additions to the State Electric family,” says Spoor.

Continued growth, says Spoor, is essential to State Electric’s future. He recalls a conversation he had with Weisberg some years ago. “We were discussing the reasons to expand. He shocked me with his simple yet accurate statement, when he said: ‘John … When you are green you grow, when you are ripe you rot.’ I will never forget those simple yet powerful words. In fact we have to grow.

“First of all, we have to grow to continue to provide opportunities for our people. If we want to keep the best and brightest talent, we must offer them a chance to expand, grow, earn more, and have more responsibilities. To keep the best we must give them a chance to grow personally.”

Growth, says Spoor, means additional buying power for the company when it comes to negotiating the best prices on the best quality products.

If a business is to be successful, he says, it must be willing and able to invest in facilities, inventory, training, and technology. “Growth allows us to leverage these investments over more locations. As an example, we would not be able to have the state of the art computer system we use today without spreading these costs across multiple locations.”

Growth, notes Spoor, means the company can spread the risk of a market segment being slow across a larger geography. “Certain segments of our business are very cyclical. While coal mining is strong, the residential market could be soft. Since we are in a variety of markets (industrial, mining, commercial, institutional, VDV, utility, residential and others) as we grow we spread the risk of not being too dependent on any single market.”

“Finally,” he says, “we grow because we like the challenge. To stay focused, energized, and constantly learning, which growth provides, makes us all sharper and more curious. We learn from every expansion, whether from an acquisition or from opening a location, we learn something every time.”

Looking to the future, both Spoor and Martin see “untold opportunity” for State Electric. “My view and my goal,” says Martin, has always been to see State Electric continue to grow larger and stronger with that growth directed toward strategic markets, thereby providing broader and better customer service, as well as enhanced opportunities for our employees.”

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