Most electrical and datacom distributors have

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1 is uccess Story Fellers Asked For Help And Rexel Delivered! By Joe Salimando Can a distributor help a customer grow a business? One Oklahoma City panelbuilder has, in recent years, lived a real-life success story. Most electrical and datacom distributors have the ambition of being more than a place where customers can come to buy products. Many customers have heard the spiel from a variety of companies. So maybe, for some, it sounds like another case of blahblahblah. But Todd Fellers of AAE Automation in Oklahoma City, Okla., has a different perspective. I run a UL-certified panel shop, he explains. I had been using another company s products for years, but I wanted to go back to the products from Rockwell Automation. To be successful in the industrial market, it s smart to go with Rockwell s Allen-Bradley products. I contacted Rexel, which is the authorized Rockwell Automation distributor in Oklahoma City, which was the start of our business relationship. I was new in town. I had just purchased a 6,000-sq.-ft. shop here. I thought that since my shop was UL-certified, we had a pretty good chance of helping some of the companies that needed control panels. I talked to Rexel about it, showed them what we can do. At this point, back in 2004 when I had just started the company, I was a one-man band (these days he has six people working with him). I couldn t afford to hire a sales staff. But the Rexel people were very open to my ideas. They actually took me out on calls to see their customers in the area, people who might need panel-building services. In the first year and half of doing that, things were slow. But in the past year or so, it has really taken off. That s mostly due to the help I ve gotten from the Rexel people. At this point, they ve helped me change the direction of my company. Right now, I d have to say I owe a lot to Rexel. The decision I made to go with Rockwell turned out very good for me, but that s primarily because of the people at Rexel! 22 POWER OUTLET rexelusa.com Volume 9 Number 1

2 UL certification is key Fellers success is thanks, in large part, to a unique qualifier: His company is a UL-certified panelbuilder. Local competitors in the OKC area are not. Further, he s a savvy businessman. He started his company with $19,000, but as it has grown, he saw the need for additional heft which is why, in early 2008, he combined his company with another. Apex Automation & Electric is now the parent of his company (AAE Automation) and an electrical contracting business, AAE Electric. What we re doing now, working together, is taking on projects, he explains. We re able to do a ground-up turn-key project for a customer, from the AAE Automation s service area consists of a 300-mile radius of Oklahoma City (shown in the circle above), with the exception of a legacy customer with which Todd Fellers has maintained a relationship in Fort Wayne, Ind. Uniting an electrical contracting firm and a UL-certified panel shop under the AAE banner was the brainchild of Pat Smith (left) and Todd Fellers. It s worked out well so far in meeting customer demand. Volume 9 Number 1 rexelusa.com POWER OUTLET 23

3 is uccess Story cont... engineering, to the panel-building, to the installation, to the start-up. And, of course, we re still using Allen- Bradley products, which we get from Rexel, to do this work. Rexel s perspective When Rexel discovered Todd Fellers and his company, Ben Newby remembers, it seemed like there was potential to create a win-win-win situation. Newby, now branch manager for Rexel in Stillwater, was an outside salesperson back in Todd created the opportunity for us to grow our business, while we helped him grow his business, Newby says. We re talking about a UL-certified panel-builder! This is what a lot of the major OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] in the area were looking for, they had told us. So, to us, it looked like we could help Todd s company by introducing him to these people. He could help meet their needs. They would appreciate our help in finding Todd for them. And as he was committed to using Rockwell s Allen- Bradley line, as he grew, our sales would grow with his. If you think about it, we at Rexel were the best choice to help Todd. Business-savvy organizations such as Rockwell know that, in order to successfully drive their product to market, they need to select distribution channels that can professionally deliver to end users on a day-to-day basis. Rockwell selected Rexel to manage the Oklahoma City territory, and this has paid off for both us and AAE Automation. On the other hand, at Rexel, we do! To us, he represented a win helping us to get another chance to talk with and help our OEM customers. And it was a win in helping him grow his business. That s two wins. The third was for Rexel, in selling more Allen-Bradley products to Todd for the panels. Fellers (left) took the time to build relationships with new customers. Here, he and his two AAE partners talk with Jack Fogle of Mercury Marine (at right). The Stillwater, Okla., Mercury plant is one of several manufacturing facilities for what is the world s leading manufacturer of recreational marine propulsion engines. 24 POWER OUTLET rexelusa.com Volume 9 Number 1

4 Patience pays off While Rexel liked what Todd s company (originally named Process Controls) had to offer, getting potential builders to use the panel-builder s services took time. At the beginning the first year, or 18 months it was actually a very slow process, Fellers remembers. I was actually sort of impatient at the time, but I had to realize my situation. These potential customers did not know me from Adam. They had to come to understand my approach, and they had to start to trust me. Once I had been around for a while, and we had built a relationship, they did begin to trust me. That s when our company started getting work, and things took off from there. Adds Jim Christofferson, Rexel s local account representative for AAE: It s still a growing relationship, a work in progress. If you look at what a qualified panel-builder that s UL-certified does for a company like ours basically, it opens up a venue that we never before were able to pursue in this area. Take Terex, which was the first opportunity which we pursued together. They make road-building machinery at a manufacturing facility here. Before Todd came along, we basically just sold Allen-Bradley products directly to them motor control centers and PLCs. Internally, they were doing some of their own panel-building. AAE presented their products and services to the Terex team. It wasn t long before Terex management saw the benefits of how outsourcing certain processes could free up their personnel to concentrate on the area they thought was most important manufacturing! AAE s three-pronged operations are represented by from left partners Pat Smith (left), Todd Fellers (of AAE Automation), and John Vaught (electrical contracting). Volume 9 Number 1 rexelusa.com POWER OUTLET 25

5 is uccess Story cont... As it turned out, Terex was a perfect place to start. Fellers had done some work previously, outside of the area, in the asphalt business. Like many niche industries, it s a relatively small world. When Christofferson introduced Fellers to Ken Cosby, head of engineering for asphalt at Terex, it turned out the two knew people in common, and had actually heard of each other. I guess the fact that Ken had heard of me before gave us a bit of credibility, Fellers says. We quoted a few panels for them. It took a few months, but after they saw the quality of the product we were delivering, they started pushing more work our way. Opportunities still arising With a panel shop and an electrical contracting company together under the AAE banner, you can find AAE people at work in many places. Here, company electrician Darel Bickell works on an installation at a tank farm. While none of the work done for Terex can be called typical, Fellers says it s all custom the story there has been repeated elsewhere in the Oklahoma City area. We re doing some work in wastewater treatment, another case in which we were introduced to the client by Rexel, he says. Again, it started out slow. We ve been building panels for this customer for about 18 months. And at the beginning, they were doing the purchasing of the parts for us, and we were just assembling the panels for them. I guess it was a kind-of wait-andsee they were waiting to see if we could deliver on what we said we could do. Now, we re doing more work for them, and we re purchasing the parts. It took time, but we ve earned the credibility and their trust. Explains Christofferson: The biggest key to the success of this concept is that manufacturing facilities are looking for additional engineering resources. AAE Automation s UL certification provides the platform that allows these types of facilities the option to outsource jobs such as panelbuilding. It is a win-win situation for all parties involved. As Fellers worked more closely with companies in the area, he began to see the logic of a hook-up with an electrical contracting company as well. We ve gotten a couple of jobs lately in which the whole idea behind our merger has really worked out for the customer, and of course for AAE, he says. One of them was in wastewater, and another in the food industry. On these jobs, my part of AAE did the engineering, panel-building, and start-up; the contracting company did the installation. It s something the customers really seem to want. 26 POWER OUTLET rexelusa.com Volume 9 Number 1

6 Customers like Mercury Marine s Jack Fogle (center) can now avail themselves of the services of a UL-certified panel shop (as represented by Todd Fellers of AAE Automation, at left) and an installing electrical contractor (AAE partner John Vaught, right). Adds Christofferson: The relationship we ve built with AAE is an important part what Rexel has focused on recently. We want to go beyond what a distributor has done in the past. Sure, we ll still sell product to those who want to buy it! But we re focusing on providing a full range of services to the customer to help the customers who want our help in growing their business. What s the bottom line? Back in August 2005, when Fellers completed the punch list needed to win UL certification for his panelbuilding shop, he might have been hoping customers would break down his door with new orders. When it didn t turn out that way, he took the steps necessary to build the business. As it turned out, the prime forward movement in that effort was to talk with his local Rexel account people. I started this business with $19,000, he recalls. The growth we ve had has been, mostly, due to the help I ve gotten from the sales people employed at Rexel. What kind of growth? As of 2008, the business has more than doubled in size (not counting the electrical contracting company s sales) from Fellers sees additional growth coming. Since 2007, everything has really taken off, he says, adding (almost with a laugh): We don t plan on slowing down! i Salimando (ecdotcom@gmail.com) is the Editor of Power Outlet. He also writes regularly on the electrical construction industry on Volume 9 Number 1 rexelusa.com POWER OUTLET 27