CES Indian Land: New Branch Makes Big Moves
The job? 30,000 pounds of wire in two weeks. The team to handle it? City Electric Supply Indian Land. It was a pretty big job for a branch that has only been in their permanent location for three months, but they proved it wasn’t out of their reach.
The Challenge
“We have a good relationship with one of the owners of the company. He reached out and said our numbers matched another guy’s,” said CES Indian Land Branch Manager Matthew Streater. “We got the job, and had two weeks to complete it, which is a very tight turnaround for an order of this size.”
When they heard the news, Streater and his team were filled with energy for the project.
“It was exciting and something we’d never done before. My Operations Manager and I saw it as a challenge.”
And, of course, landing the job was just the beginning. It took a lot of strategy and hard work to figure out the timing.
“We were all in,” said Streater. “I remember several evening phone calls with people spent figuring out what we had to do to get the job done.”
The Success
Not only did they do the job, they did it well.
“We needed 4 parallels of 600 MCM copper, and each run was 920 feet long. Most vendors would have a hard time paralleling that much wire, and that size of wire altogether,” explained Streater. “On one reel alone, you’re looking at 3,500 feet. Most vendors would have a hard time pulling that off and making it look neat and professional, but my team did it no problem, and it looks great.”
Streater was proud of, but not surprised by, his team’s impressive work.
“This was a lot of hard work, and the project and purchasing managers went out of their way to tell me how proud they were of the way the order came in and how quickly. This whole job is really a tribute to my team — everyone from the driver, counter guy, operations manager, sales guy, all the way to me,” said Streater. “If we’re all in it together, we can handle projects of any size.”
Just the Beginning for CES Indian Land
Could this job, the biggest one the branch has seen yet, be a peak for CES Indian Land? Hardly.
“You can bet this is only going to open up more doors for us. The project and purchasing managers were hesitant to work with us. They didn’t know if we’d be able to do an order of this size,” said Streater. “But we did, and now we definitely have a shot at even bigger jobs.”
Impressively, this success story seems to be a pattern rather than an anomaly for Streater and his team.
“It’s what we do. We take opportunities like this, do the best we can, and show them what we are capable of,” said Streater. “I’m proud of all we did in such a short period of time and can’t wait to tackle even bigger projects in the future.”