With the new year brings some new partnerships. Stanion has partnered with Grace Technologies to bring you some exciting new products. One product I would like to bring to your attention, if you do not know about it already, is the VTS (Voltage Test Station). We here at Stanion are excited to be able to offer this product to our customers.
Let’s go ahead and get this out of the way right off the bat: I’m the bosses’ kid. My grandparents, Jud and Bobbe Stanion, started Stanion Wholesale Electric in 1961. Now their daughter and son-in-law, my parents, run the show. So yes, I more or less grew up in this company and in electrical distribution. But neither my grandparents nor my parents ever pressured me whatsoever to join the family business. Still, I always saw myself being in the business world, and around junior high, I started to think seriously about Stanion as a career choice.
Since March, I have been sending weekly, upbeat COVID-19 email messages to all Stanion employees. At first, the messages were positive articles about dealing with the pandemic. Later, they evolved into mostly funny or caring memes. The whole idea was to project caring and kindness more than anything else.
Wholesale distribution is a relatively unknown part of the supply chain. Most would not be aware that wholesale distribution contributes approximately $6 Trillion to the US economy, annually. Agriculture, alcoholic beverage, automotive parts, department stores, electrical and electronics, groceries, landscaping and nursery, lumber and building materials, medical, office paper, oil and gas, plants and floral, plumbing, power transmission, and restaurant and food are among the many industries served by wholesale distribution networks.
You’ve probably heard the term by now. After all, we are six months into this pandemic and still dealing with the changes and challenges that have come with it. There have been losses of lives, jobs, businesses, and stability for many with continued uncertainty about the future. Let’s face it, there isn’t a lot of good news when you turn on the TV, and it can be depressing day after day dealing with all the setbacks and problems due to COVID, hence the “fatigue.” It’s hard at times to stay positive through all of this, and it would seem the “end of the tunnel” is still quite a way off.
For many electrical distributors in specific locations around the country, the oil & gas industry is a key business driver. When drilling activity is robust, the demand for electrical products to support these projects increases. When activity declines, so do revenues for electrical wholesalers and other supply chain entities that help support the oil & gas sector.
Current events of the state of Kansas, the United States, and the world lend themselves to a plethora of topics to be written about. My topic is severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), or more commonly known as coronavirus disease (COVID-19). More specifically, I would like to share my thoughts regarding masks. Who would have imagined the controversy surrounding the wearing, or not wearing a mask? Somehow, the simple act of covering your mouth and nose with a mask (regardless of mask type) has created, in some people, a highly charged reaction. My purely unscientific guess is this.
My name is Bill Keller, and I am the CEO of Stanion Wholesale Electric Co. and a member of the dinosaur generation. Nevertheless, I am introducing a new feature to our website, a blog. This is my first attempt at writing for our blog, but we intend this to be the first of many posts on our website. We hope that you will enjoy the blogs that we post, and we invite your comments and questions. My children and grandchildren may run circles around me with respect to technology, but none of them have yet written a blog.
