Compiling and publishing a Buyer’s Guide issue is always a personal struggle for me. It’s not that doing so is difficult — not by any stretch of the imagination.
It is, however, time consuming, tedious, and mind-numbingly boring. I’ve often felt that pages upon pages of listings take up space that could be better utilized by providing more content to educate and inform our readers.
With all that said, I’ve recently come to the following realization about our annual Buyer’s Guide issue: It’s worth every bit of it.
In fact, this may be the most important issue we publish each year.
You’ve heard me mention this before, but allow me to reiterate how Wind Systems views its role in the wind energy industry:
It is our charge to cultivate and educate a unified industry workforce with the singular goal of fostering sustainable growth for wind energy, in turn giving wind direction.
In its own unique way, our annual Buyer’s Guide is the implementation of our mission in its purest form. For a clearer understanding, allow me to briefly take you behind the scenes.
Each year, we review our previous year’s Buyer’s Guide for updates, modifications, errors, etc. This could be as simple as updating a phone number or website, or as detailed as replacing the entire listing in the event of an acquisition.
But those changes mostly just involve proofreading. The real value in our Buyer’s Guide is the time and effort we invest in ensuring that the companies we list are truly applicable to the wind energy industry.
In other words, we try to be as selective as possible with our listings so that this guide is a truly valuable service to our readers and that it fosters the industry unity mentioned above.
That means keeping up with the companies that are entering the wind market. We see that as a positive sign for the industry and welcome these companies with enthusiasm.
Conversely, it sometimes means rejecting the tire kickers and companies who “have chosen to focus on other industries.” Let me make this clear: We have no qualms about doing just that.
The end result is the issue you now hold in your hands. We’ve done what we can to provide you with a starting point for your wind industry purchasing decisions. Judging by our most recent BPA Worldwide Brand Report (available for download at windsystemsmag.com), that’s something many of you are familiar with. More than 58 percent of our readers are involved in the purchasing process.
So we’ll let you take over from here. There’s just one catch: When you make those calls, please be sure to tell them you saw their listing in Wind Systems.
Also, to request a listing in our 2016 Buyer’s Guide, please send an email with “2016 Buyer’s Guide” in the subject line to info@windsystemsmag.com. In the body of the message, please include your company name, website, and telephone number as you would like them to appear in your listing. Also, please include the section and category for your listing.
Thanks for reading
