Electri-Flex Core Values | Partnerships

Electri-Flex Company was built on its partnership philosophy, from 1955 through today, tying its success directly to this foundation. This philosophy was best stated by H.W. “West” Kinander, Jr., former president & co-owner, shortly before his untimely death in 1991. “Quality, service, fair distributor margins and loyalty to one’s business partners has been the theme since our company began. It will continue to be the benchmark by which our company will be judged, you have my word.”
Brock Klein, Director of Sales & Marketing, sits down with us to discuss the meaning of partnerships for Electri-Flex and what that philosophy is today.
We go about our partnerships and look at them as part of our family. The Electri-Flex family is very important to everything we do, and our partners, distributors, and customers, are just extensions of that. Partnerships are key to our business, especially loyal partnerships. These key partnerships play an important role in the supply chain. We are committed to having long and loyal partnerships for our suppliers, which provides us with an uninterrupted supply of the highest quality raw materials. In turn we can provide our loyal distributor partners with the highest quality flexible conduit and the largest inventory on the market. This leads to delivering the best-in-class product and service all the way to the end customer.
What added value do Electri-Flex partners receive?
As we look into partnerships, we look for a few things that we want to make sure that we can provide to our partners and customers – one of those things are extreme high levels of service. We don’t want our customers to have to worry about when they order product, when they’re going to get it, how they’re going to get it, and if it’s going to come in right. So our service levels are key to those partnerships. Because first and foremost, you have to have the product in order to continue to have a partnership.
Number two, we understand our partner’s business needs and ensure they understand ours. This guarantees that we’re working in unison towards the ultimate goal which is to increase our capabilities for our shared customers. We want to make sure that the customer is getting exactly what they need, and when they need it, and to be able to deliver that value every single time.
What role do raw material suppliers play in supporting Electri-Flex customers?
In order to deliver on our products and services to our customers and partners, we have to also have partners of our own. And so we take loyalty on both sides of our business, on our suppliers that are providing the raw materials and goods that we need to produce our products, as well as on the customer side, making sure that we’re all aligned to have a good product that gets out to the market that’s going to be of high quality; it’s going to get to the market faster than anybody else.
We have to take those partnerships on both sides of our supply chain and make sure they’re all in unison and that they all have a good understanding of what is the true message, what is our true value proposition.
Building trust is integral to building relationships, and those include loyal, long-standing ones. Describe how Electri-Flex achieves this.
One of the things that we do very well is we try to maintain and build our partnership loyalty. And we do that in many ways. I think the number one way is communication.
We try to communicate with our partners to better understand what their business is doing and for them to better understand what our business is doing. Whether it’s something as simple as, “Hey, there’s a delay out there,” or “We’re working on this,” or “We want to develop this. What do you think? Does this make sense? Will this help you?” And we also want to make sure that they see what we’re doing and how we’re investing in the future. So we like to make sure that people can see our facility, providing tours so our partners know what we’re doing and making throughout our manufacturing process.
Communication with our partners is probably the key to exactly how we build that trust and that loyalty. A great example of that is with our manufacturer rep partners that have been partnered with Electri-Flex for over 50 years.
In order to have that, there’s a great understanding of what we need and what they need in their local markets, and how they portray our product, quality, service, and dedication to our customers in those different locations. So that’s a great example of how we take partnerships at all levels of our business, whether it is with our end customer, the installer of our product, or even our manufacturer rep agents that help us sell our product, or the suppliers that we get our raw materials from.
One of the things that set Electri-Flex apart, when it comes to partnerships, is the longevity of those partnerships. As a company that’s been around for almost 70 years now, with longstanding distribution and contractor partnerships, our relationships go back for 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, almost 70 years.
And for us, that’s some of the most important things as a family-run business, is to partner with those that have the same thought process and mentality as us. And in this industry, we find our electrical contractors and our electrical distribution partners think the same way, understand what value is, want to provide value to their customers. And so we do things a little bit differently than our competition. We want to make sure that they understand exactly all of the things that make us win and allow them to win as well in the marketplace.