PEARL: The Electrical Industry Needs You Now

I was thinking the other day about my father and how he would have made a great PEARL member. When I was growing up on a small cul-de-sac in southern California, my father was the go-to guy when something was broken and needed fixing. For me, it was usually my bicycle chain. Despite the fact that my father didn’t make bicycle chains or have a factory out back churning out master links, he had the tooling, the knowledge, the parts on hand, and the willingness to get me back on the road. In other words, my father was the neighborhood’s PEARL.

When electrical suppliers call themselves ‘Supply Chain Solution Providers,’ it sounds like they have everything a customer could need. The truth is that it is impossible for any company to have every piece of equipment ever made, and have it ready to go when the customer needs it. What is the wholesaler to do when the hub and the factory have no stock? What should the sales person tell the customer who is losing mega bucks every hour a manufacturing plant is not making goods because of down electrical service?

PEARL members are a big part of the answer when a customer needs help, and Needs-It-Now. Unlike traditional electrical distributors and OEMs, PEARL companies combine new, reconditioned, and surplus equipment from all manufacturers to create extensive electrical inventories. Because of our business and technical standards, inventory, knowledge, and commitment to safety, PEARL members are the only Need-It-Now-Electrical-Supplier (NINES) you can trust when normal electrical supply channels aren’t available. PEARL members are critical links in the electrical supply chain and often the only safe answer to electrical customers in a bind. Our reconditioning efforts mean we have special tools, deep knowledge of electrical products, and are considered experts in our markets, while our technical standards give our customers the transparency and trust they deserve.

So why am I talking to you about NINES? Is it to expand PEARL by making us more attractive to a larger cross-section of electrical suppliers? No. Is it just another positive way for the Electrical Marketplace to look at PEARL members? Yes, but even more importantly to all of us, it may be a more realistic way for us to view ourselves, and explain our businesses to our customers and the electrical marketplace.

What do you think about the NINES model? Let me ask you one more question: Do you tell your customers you sell new and surplus as well as reconditioned equipment? If so, you must think that’s Need-To-Know information. The Need-It-Now-Electrical-Supplier model may not have been where the PEARL journey was originally headed, but it does appear to me that NINES is where we are. I would like to hear what you think about NINES, PEARL, and what you’d like to see in the future. Please drop me a note at brian@monsterfuses.com, or call me at 888-444-4335.

Thanks for your time,

Brian Corekin
President, PEARL

PS – “To the Nines,” or “to the Ninth degree” are ancient phrases that mean “perfection.” Today, six9’s refers to the highest level of “availability” or “uptime” achievable by industrial and commercial operations.