A member of Congress asked me a pretty standard question recently: “What is it that your members do and are there any in my district?” As it was the end of what had been a long day, I decided to forgo my detail-oriented breakdown of the HVACR supply chain, replete with graphics from Texas A&M and anecdotes that Mike Marks has been trotting out for 20 years (they’re good anecdotes, otherwise I wouldn’t be stealing …err borrowing them), and instead cut to the chase. “When your air-conditioner breaks down, the guy who comes to your house to fix it, if he’s any good, he buys his stuff from a HARDI distributor, and yes, we have locations within your district, as we have a HARDI member in every single congressional district.”
I’ve had multiple versions of the aforementioned conversation during my 4½ years representing HARDI on Capitol Hill, but recently I’ve begun to think, “Why aren’t we as an industry more aggressive about promoting what we do to our elected officials?”