What to Look for in Electrical Panel Manufacturers in 2022
The open market is a beautiful thing for both buyers and sellers. It allows craftsmen to leverage their particular expertise to start a business, and potential customers the freedom to choose which business they think is worth their patronage. The reasons for choosing a vendor can vary. Sometimes customers base it on how clever the advertising is or whether or not they like the proprietor. And there’s nothing wrong with choosing based on either of those. But for those of you looking to pick an electrical control panel manufacturer, we wanted to offer five concrete things you should look for to help you choose wisely.
Experience
There’s a reason we’re listing this first — nothing compares to experience. The more experience a vendor has, the higher the likelihood they’ve faced a wider gamut of problems and have therefore had to provide a larger number of solutions.
Longevity
This goes hand in hand with experience above. The longer the panel shop has been in business, the more adversity they’ve had to weather over the years. Their grit and determination to succeed can often serve you well as you know their product/service is a proven commodity.
Financial Stability
Consider this the third piece to the first two above. Has the panel shop just started up in the last year? Or are they well established within the industry? Answering either of those questions will give you insight into their financial stability and give you assurance that their relationships with other vendors can help them deliver what they promise.
Flexibility in sourcing parts
With the continued supply chain issues facing the nation, this has become more important recently. Can the panel manufacturer get the right parts within the timeframe promised? Or will your project be left hanging by an ineffective supply chain?
UL certifications
There are industry standards electrical control panel manufacturers are required to meet. If the shop you’re considering doesn’t possess the necessary requirements, stay far, far away. The knowledge base represented by passing the latest UL certifications shows a vendor is the real deal.
Equipped with this list of five “must haves” in identifying your control panel manufacturer, your next step is to start the search. Being the helpful people we are, we’re going to do our best to shorten that for you as well. The answer is found in one acronym: UCEC. We’ll quickly run through the list again and provide you our own credentials as proof points.
Experience
We’ve been in business for 64 years. In that time, our knowledge and skill have both grown proportionally into what can now be considered genuine expertise. There isn’t a situation we haven’t encountered or a problem we haven’t solved. Reputable companies recognize there’s noise and that less experienced shops will try to attract business with shiny objects because it’s cheaper. And it is, until it isn’t. Once a problem arises like didn’t buy all parts and there’s a warranty issue. Need to find out who did what versus controlling the whole process.
Longevity
For some shops, the pandemic might have been their first real bout with adversity. But UCEC started in 1958. That means we’ve survived the Cuban missile crisis, energy crisis, swine flu, the great recession and everything in between. Hardships that might’ve caused other shops to fold, we conquered.
Financial Stability
As we said earlier, this component is borne out of our expertise and longevity. With our financial stability comes relationships with vendors that allow us to deliver our products according to timelines we verify with you in advance.
Flexibility in sourcing parts
While one of our competitive advantages used to be getting things done faster than everyone else because we sourced parts better than everyone else, now it’s more of a level playing field since everyone’s waiting on the same parts. That’s why we’ll always tell you upfront the best we can do with what’s available.
UL certifications
We passed the new UL certification more than a year ago while some of our competitors recently just passed or are still trying to. That’s important because if you’re a UL shop, you’re required to be certified by a certain date. Perhaps even more impressive is our UL listing. In all our time of having the license, we’ve never been cited for a variation where one our panels isn’t in compliance.
Now, don’t get us wrong, while all the points above may sound like we’re tooting our own horn, we want to be clear that we’re just being honest. It’s the way we’ve always operated. And we’re careful not to provide an inflated version of who UCEC is or what we can do. We’re simply proud of our experience and want to serve you, our customers, with the finest quality control panels in the nation.
As always, you can connect with our experienced team to get a quote, ask a question, and more.