Sonepar USA CEO Tony Burr provides his view on the state of the economy, the impact of copper and fuel prices on the electrical distributor’s business, and attracting new talent to the industry.
MDM: How do you view the current state of the economy?
Tony Burr: We cannot exempt ourselves from what is going on in the economy. The marketplace is difficult. We all see what is happening in construction, and a chunk of our business is in that. We are also in commercial, which is holding up reasonably well. One of the things I did a few years ago when I started buying up companies here for Sonepar was to spread our risk. I moved us away from being totally contractor-related.
That’s when we got into the utility- …
