• What Forecasting and Star Products Have in Common

    Jan. 1, 2011
    This January issue is the continuation of something new for our readers. As some of you will hopefully recall, last year this magazine had its first January

    This January issue is the continuation of something new for our readers. As some of you will hopefully recall, last year this magazine had its first January issue, one that focused on the issue of refrigerant replacement. We made that thematic decision because we knew that one year ago, everyone would have refrigerants on their mind.

    Given the success of last January's special issue, we've decided to add the January issue to our regular publishing schedule, which brings this magazine to eight issues each year. As a reminder, we started in 1999 as a quarterly.

    As John Ehlen, my publisher, and I brain-stormed over what we should do with the January issue, one element remained firmly fixed in our minds: Let's make it new and fresh and have information that no one will have seen.

    We decided that an issue on forecasting makes sense. We know that every company forecasts — whether they do it in a strict, formal sense, spending days if not weeks during the process, or if it is a practice that only exists in the mind of the owner, who writes down his forecast on a simple notepad.

    We wanted to bring some order to the process and to expose our readers to divergent views that deal with both the information that you need to create a forecast and the process that you should consider as you try to rate your own approach. Taking it one step further, we were convinced that such an in-depth look would serve as a guide not only for owners but their management team, too.

    With all due modesty, I believe we've achieved that goal by providing a broad look at forecasting from an array of top experts.

    We've gone further, however, by not limiting forecasting to the “numbers game.” We decided to include the other fundamental item in our industry: the products we sell. With that in mind, we've developed a comprehensive list of Star Products (dubbed by John Ehlen) for your preview. We used this name because we wanted manufacturers to send us products that they were proud of, but more importantly, ones they felt deserved special attention for our readers as they re-examined their lines for 2011.

    We've had more than 80 companies join us in this endeavor. We thank them for their contributions and we urge our readers to see what makes these products special or, in John's words, “stars.”

    HVACR Distribution Business welcomes letters to the editor. Please send correspondence to: Tom Pericˊ, Editor 2040 Fairfax Avenue Cherry Hill, NJ 08003
    856/874-0049 or e-mail
    [email protected].