In the past month, Focused Energy has been selected by two industry-leading manufacturers to participate in exclusive distribution programs.
SMA America, the world’s leading inverter manufacturer, recently announced its Authorized Distributor Program and chose Focused Energy as both a Residential and Commercial AD. In its own press release, SMA stated that “Solar professionals [will] benefit in a variety of ways, including faster delivery, as distributors carry increased warehouse stock. There also is improved service and support such as greater access to valuable technical resources.” SMA is currently launching a new line of transformerless inverters and its Tri-Power inverter for distributed-architecture commercial projects.
Also in July, Unirac, a leading manufacturer of PV racking solutions, launched its Elite Partner Program and included Focused Energy in a select set of distributors with exclusive access to a variety of Unirac resources. Unirac has also revamped its product set, announcing new flat and pitched roof solutions at Intersolar earlier this month and signaling additional new products in Q4 2013.
“Top tier manufacturers are recognizing the value of the distribution, and moreover, the value of building sustainable, long-term partnerships with Focused Energy. Our national reach, global relationships through our parent company, BayWa, and unique, streamlined business model makes us capable of being valuable to both manufacturers and installers to a very high degree,” said Focused Energy CEO Paul Benson.
“Narrowing the field of distributors and direct customers enable manufacturers to concentrate on R&D and manufacturing, which will make them competitive long-term, and leave the warehousing, forecasting, logistics and customer service to us, since that is our core business and where we excel,” added Focused COO, Dean Scott. “This represents a maturity in the value chain.”
Focused Energy has dedicated a Technical Sales team to provide more of the pre-sale design consulting and post-sale tech support needed to more robustly support the SMA and Unirac product lines, and will be collaborating with both manufacturers on a series of initiatives throughout the year.