Win Group kicks off renewable energy venture

BY MARY JO MARTIN

Editorial director

A face that is familiar to many in this industry is heading up a new venture affiliated with the Win Group of Companies. Kevin Price, the former director of the American Supply Association Center for Advancing Technology, is president of Framingham Winsupply Co., the first Win store to focus on the renewable energy market.

The Holliston, Mass., store offers photovoltaic, solar thermal, geothermal and wind turbine products that are designed to provide electricity, domestic hot water, heating and air conditioning for residential and commercial use. It caters to a customer base that includes electrical, plumbing and hvac contractors throughout Boston and the Greater MetroWest area, Cape Cod and the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.

Editorial director Mary Jo Martin learned more about this new venture during a recent interview with Price and Steve Edwards, who is WinWholesale’s director of corporate communications.

MJM: Many of our readers will recognize you, Kevin, but could you please share some information about your background, both in wholesaling and with ASA?

Price: I would be happy to. My Dad was a Master Plumber in Massachusetts so I grew up around the plumbing industry. I started my career in wholesaling in 1981 with Reardon and Lynch, (now Supply New England) as a warehouse person. I held various positions within the company, eventually managing the new computer system. During the next 18 years I managed computer systems for a number of New England wholesalers. In 1998 I took the position with asa and for 10 years served as director of its Center for Advancing Technology.

MJM: Where did the idea come from for this new venture, and what peaked your interest in getting back into wholesaling?

Price: It wasn’t difficult to see the signs of increasing pressure on America’s energy market. Wholesalers are right in the middle of the struggle due to our sales of heating equipment that uses fossil fuels. As the country looks for new ways to deliver heating, cooling and even power for our homes and businesses, there is a need for someone to distribute that new equipment. My idea was to bring professional distribution techniques to this emerging renewable energy market. Currently, no one else is doing it, so the market is wide open.

Wholesaling is what I know. For 28 years I have been involved with every aspect of the distribution process, from the warehouse to the front office. But this time it was my money on the line, as I would share in capitalizing and owning the new venture with WinWholesale.

MJM: What was the initial reaction at WinWholesale when Kevin came to you with this idea?

Edwards: WinWholesale is built upon something we call the “Spirit of Opportunity,” which means

we want to help capable, hard-working individuals like Kevin who know the wholesale trade and have entrepreneurial courage and belief in their own capabilities. While the products Kevin sells are unique, it was clear that Kevin understands the wholesaling business and had a business plan in place that we felt was a good fit for our organization.

MJM: Can you describe the process you went through with WinWholesale in developing the business plan and getting everything in order?

Price: WinWholesale has a great program of providing new company presidents with local support through “sponsors” who also buy-in to the capitalization of the new venture. I have two sponsors -- Andy Holmes of Coastal WinAir in Biddeford, Maine, and Wayne Billingham of Shelton Winnelson in Connecticut. Both of these seasoned veterans worked with me to get our company opened, from working on the business plan to helping set up the racking in the warehouse. I would be remiss if I didn’t note the extraordinary amount of assistance I received from our area leader Ed D’Amico. Ed has been with WinWholesale for over 30 years and brings a wealth of knowledge to the table. I can’t tell you how many times Ed answered late night calls from me as we worked through the business plan.

MJM: As this is the first-of-its-kind store for WinWholesale, what type of planning went into it from a corporate standpoint, and how has it been different from your other store models?

Edwards: It really didn’t require planning that was materially different than for any other of our local company operations. Our business model is based on a partnership between someone like Kevin and WinWholesale. Kevin proved to us that he had a solid business plan including customers, relationships with vendors and he was willing to invest in his own success. We simply provided capital and a support infrastructure to help him achieve that success.  The only real difference was that Kevin is working with manufacturers with whom we traditionally haven’t had relationships.

MJM: How long did it take from the initial concept to open the doors of the branch?

Price: If you will indulge me, I’d like to make a point before I answer your question. As Rick Schwartz, ceo of WinWholesale has taught me, ‘branches are for trees.”  We are actually local companies with resident owners who are equity partners with WinWholesale in Dayton. This is worth noting because the model of local ownership is not widespread in our industry, but it was the key ingredient that led me to approach Rick with the idea of opening a distributorship dedicated to this new market.

As to the time frame, I flew out to the Win offices in Dayton back in October 2007 and we opened our location on June 2, 2008. This is probably longer than the usual process, but for Win there were two challenges with this venture:

• One, of course, is the renewables market. While all indicators point to a robust and sustained growth over the next five years, it is a new market. If we were another plumbing supply you could point to hundreds of locations in the Win Group for a model to follow, but with our venture we’re the first.
• The second challenge was me. Win usually grows organically from within. While a lot of folks may know of me from my time at asa, I had not been through the usual apprenticeship that a new local president has the benefit of.

I’m happy to say that since the decision to “go” was made, everyone has been pitching in to see us succeed. That is WinWholesale’s strength -- identify an opportunity and run with it.

MJM: How do you define renewable resources products?

Price: We currently focus on four areas:

• Solar electricity or Photovoltaics (PV for short)
• Solar Thermal
• Geo-Thermal
• Wind Turbines.

We also work with high-efficiency products using natural gas. While natural gas isn’t a renewable per se, it’s a lot cleaner than coal or oil.

MJM: Can you tell me a little about the applications these products are used for and how they are beneficial, both to the user and to the environment?

Price: Lets take Photovoltaics -- PV -- as our discussion model. Pv can be used in residential or commercial venues. The system delivers electricity to run your computers or televisions or whatever -- just like buying power from your local utility, except you don’t have the monthly electric bill.

That’s not to say these systems are inexpensive; in fact, there is a sizable investment required. However, today there are several federal, state and utility programs available to help offset the installation costs. As for the environmental impacts, every pv array installed lowers the co2 produced by burning fossil fuels to produce electricity. Lowering co2 emissions may slow the greenhouse warming effects many scientists note happening around the globe today.

MJM: Who exactly are your customers -- contractors, utilities, facility managers, etc?

Price: All of the above. We’re taking the traditional wholesale model and applying it to a new market. Just looking at the possible sales for Photovoltaic solar panels generating electricity, there are over 34,000 licensed electricians in Massachusetts. If just 10% of those contractors start installing pv arrays we’ll be very busy.

MJM: Had you spoken with potential customers in the Northeast prior to start-up to gauge their interest; was a store like this being asked for?

Price: Yes, that was part of our background work before committing to the project. Also, we did a lot of research with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to size up the potential for business. Governor Deval Patrick has set a goal of having 250 megawatts of solar power installed in the state by 2017. It’s aggressive, but is an achievable target.

MJM: Why did you think the Northeast would be a good market for such a venture?

Price: We are located right in the middle of the Northeast in an area called the MetroWest region, which is about 20 miles west of Boston. Massachusetts actually ranks on the top 10 states suitable for solar power as determined by the amount of sunlight that falls in our area. Given our high population base, and the greater-than-average amount of fossil fuels burned in our region we believed our market potential was second only to that of California.

MJM: Do you have plans to open new stores in other parts of the country?

Price: The potential is already there. I field a number of calls every week from fellow local presidents of Win companies who heard about our venture and want to jump in, too.

Edwards: We continually evaluate new opportunities like this.  Renewable energy is certainly a hot topic right now and there’s a lot of opportunity. 

However, there are some issues for wholesalers in the renewable energy space such as direct selling from manufacturers that need to shake out a bit more before we would consider any significant expansion.  We’re fortunate to have someone like Kevin blazing these trails for us.

MJM: What are you doing to reach out to customers in your trading area and educate them on the benefits of these products?

Price: We’re approaching that in two ways:

• By offering a training center
• Through our showroom.

My good friend Paul Martin from asa taught me the value of education and now I’m putting that to work. We’ve teamed up with a local college that offers a “green” curriculum to bring training to our customers. We supply the classroom and the lab with products that contractors can practice working with, and the college loans us one of their professors. It’s a great partnership.

We had our first training session in June and the class was completely filled. Then word spread about our program and I received a call from Mike Manning of  National Grid, one of our local Gas & Electric utilities. Mike heads up a lot of the utility’s Renewables programs and he asked if they could sponsor the next course.  This new alliance will expand our outreach to interested contractors.

Our showroom features displays of all of the products we carry -- from wind turbines to a solar trash compactor. We also need to “walk the walk” so this summer we installed a 1.8KW wind turbine next to our building. One of the most power sales tools we have is  having a customer in our showroom watch our electric meter spinning backwards as the wind turbine generates a credit for us. This fall we are scheduled to install a pv array that will also deliver electricity to our building. By wintertime, our electric bill should be negligible.

MJM: Are these products and the concept something that also needs to be promoted at the consumer level so they can drive interest among the trade?

Price: Yes, and our showroom helps a lot with promoting the products. We also have a website where anyone can download information. The address is www.winsupplyre.com.

MJM: Who are your primary vendors?

Price: A lot of name your readers probably won’t recognize -- Skystream, Stiebel Eltron, nts, Mitsubishi, Schott, Evergreen.

MJM: Were folks within the Win Group involved with Kevin in interviewing/selecting vendors?

Edwards: Kevin had a very good idea of what vendors and lines he wanted and he made the contacts. We did discuss vendor relations and mechanics, but we deferred to his expertise on his selections. 

MJM: Please describe the support you receive from the Win Group?

Price: They’re great! Our success is dependent on the systems, financing, buying power and dedication to the concept from the Win Group -- both in Dayton and those in the field like our regional office and local sponsors. I’m just the guy on the ground here; I couldn’t do it without their help.

Edwards: The support the Win Group has given Kevin is not really any different than we’d have with any new company. We have a very strong support team in the field that is there to help Kevin and all of our companies succeed. We are certainly monitoring the performance of Kevin’s operation so we can support him in any way we can.

We pride ourselves on the expertise we provide our customers.  Kevin is clearly an authority on renewable energy, and adding him and Framingham WinSupply to the Win Group of Companies further expands the knowledge and service we can provide our customers.

For more information, visit the Framingham WinSupply website at www.winsupplyre.com.

Kevin Price, president of Framingham Winsupply Co. in Holliston, Mass., cuts the ribbon officially opening the first Win store to focus on the renewable energy market.