Blazer Electric Supply defies corporate stereotypes as it aims to be Western Slope’s No. 1 electrical distributor

Tim Hart, The Business Times

With nearly five decades of experience in electrical supply, working for major companies in various locations across the nation, Don Ligrani witnessed the ownership transformation of electrical supply companies.

He said small, independent suppliers were plentiful at one time, but large corporations gradually bought many of them and changed the way things got done. And Ligrani thinks that was a net loss for the customers, as bigger is better in some ways, but not all ways.

That’s a big reason why he joined Blazer Electric Supply Company, which had a soft opening in Grand Junction last fall and “officially” opened its location in January at 555 25 Road. Blazer was bought in 2024 by a larger corporation, Graybar, but the small, independent suppliers they buy are allowed to continue doing the things that made them worth buying.

Ligrani, who manages the Grand Junction store, finds that approach refreshing.

“They’re more localized,” he said. “They believe in that. They believe in a let’s-treat-it-like-a-family-business deal, which is hard to find in our industry.”

Blazer Electric Supply will have 30-plus manufacturers and vendors on hand as it shows local contractors what its supply house is about this week, hosting the “Blazer Backyard BBQ & Tradeshow” on April 29.

Ligrani said electrical supply used to be dominated by small, independent companies.

“I’ve been to 28 locations, just working myself, for two major companies, from coast to coast, from Texas to Maine, and I’ve watched the industry get kind of sucked up by the big corporate organizations,” he said. “The independents just kept selling out, and there’s not very many of them left.

“They used to dominate the landscape. There was always a local geography, like a Colorado distributor, but everything’s kind of gotten bigger and more owned by a major corporation.”

However, that isn’t a bad thing when it’s Blazer Supply Company and Graybar with their approach after buying a small electrical supplier.

“The reason why they do that, I found out, is if they buy them and leave them alone, let them run like family, they outperform the corporate locations,” Ligrani said. “A lot of what I’ve seen when I did acquisitions for years, somebody would get bought, and (the corporation) would try to change them to what they are.”

Blazer Electric Supply started in Colorado Springs in 1984 and expanded to Pueblo in 1987, becoming the largest electrical distributor in Southern Colorado. Grand Junction has Blazer Electric Supply’s only store on the Western Slope, and Ligrani said Blazer wanted to locate in the Grand Valley about eight to 10 years ago.

“They’ve been trying for years, but they never could put a team together here,” he said. “You know, you just can’t go brick and mortar and then not know who’s gonna run it, who’s gonna work there.

“I was able to bring a team with me. And I think we’ve probably got the most experienced team on the Western Slope. We’ve probably got over 300 years of experience in what we do, between all my people added up.”

Bringing his team meant Ligrani hired 10 people right off the bat, and he hopes to expand on that.

He’ll have to hire more people if Blazer achieves its ultimate goal in the Grand Junction market: to be the No. 1 electrical distributor on the Western Slope.

Ligrani said that goal comes with the need to explain what No. 1 means.

“A lot of people associate that with volume,” he said, “and even though that kind of comes along with it, being No. 1, there’s three legs of that stool to me.”

Ligrani then broke it down with:

No. 1 – Be the best place to work.

“And what I mean by that is the culture is positive, and we promote from within and train. So, you have a chance to start here and finish your career here. That’s hard to do nowadays,” he said.

No. 2 – Ligrani said this may be even harder to do – be the MVP to your customers. And by MVP, he means “most valuable partner,” one that gets to know its local customers and their differing needs.

“We want to be their first call, and we want to be the people that get what you want when you want it. That’s the most important thing for anybody,” he said. “And be the easiest to do business with.”

No. 3 – Give back to the community.

That’s an important part of localization, as Ligrani said, “We plan to give back about $10,000 this year, just opening round.”

He then listed organizations Blazer Electric Supply would like to support, such as CMU Tech, Kids Aid and “all of the running and sporting events that we can.” Ligrani said that probably will be eight or nine organizations during the first year, then “I hope to keep expanding that.”

He said Blazer Electric Supply wants its customers to know “when you do business with us, we give a portion of it back to where it helps the community.”

And when it comes to vying for customers, being a localized company is what makes Blazer Electric Supply different, Ligrani said.

“That corporate mentality that sometimes you see, where one size fits all, the offering we have is more like a localized business, even though we’re a big company,” he said.

Ligrani added that’s a big difference, and experience hammered that home for the 65-year-old. After almost 50 years in the business, Ligrani said he has seen corporate bureaucracy, “how that hurts companies in towns like this, where you need to really transition fast to either take care of a one-man shop or a large group.”

The large corporations, he said, “kind of have a one-size cookie cutter. We don’t. We scale our inventory to exactly our localized needs. And I think that’s the big difference.

“The stuff gets bought in Colorado, shipped to this location. And we probably have a million-and-a-half to $2 million worth of inventory. We store all the local jobs on the Western Slope here and get them to the installers when they need them, so everything’s done right out of here.”

Blazer Electric Supply, 555 25 Road in Grand Junction, is predominantly a wholesaler, but Manager Don Ligrani said it also does retail sales.

“It’s not that often the public comes in and does their own electrical,” he said. “But we have that connection to the community as well.

“It’s more the professional installer or maintenance person who buys from us: the contractors; the electricians; maintenance people.”

Wide variety, plus Eaton products

Whoever the customer is, Ligrani said Blazer Electric Supply can help.

“We have probably the widest variety of the offerings for every segment, whether we’re doing a home or a hospital. And we also have a fabrication shop to manufacture certain control products. For instance, we’re supplying the pump controls for the (Grand Junction) Rec Center to pump the water in and out of the pools. We made that ourselves.”

Ligrani said after the power company hits the building or the facility with power, “We supply everything from there on, to manage it, distribute it. That’s really the channel that electrical distributors do is from that light switch all the way to the machine that’s controlling the machine. We supply all that.”

Blazer Electric Supply also carries Eaton electric products, which is significant.

“Eaton Corporation, which is a large national firm, they haven’t had representation in this valley for 15 years,” Ligrani said. “And so they signed us up as a distributor for all of Colorado and eastern Utah. And that comes from household breakers all the way to industrial equipment, so that’s a need that we’re fulfilling now.”

Urban jungle replaced the old homestead

If your time in the Grand Valley goes back a few generations, the name Ligrani may ring a bell. There was a time when Grand Junction’s west boundary ended where Ligrani Farm began.

“If you go to Lowe’s or Red Robin or West Junior High, the Chevrolet dealer (Ed Bozarth) and on down, that was all Ligrani Farm,” said Don Ligrani, adding he thinks he was “probably the last generation to work on the farm,” and he left farming as a young adult to get into the electrical-supply business.

He said his great grandfather came over from Denver with three brothers, probably around 1915 to 1920, and they grew produce.

“We were known for our carrots,” Ligrani said. “Carrots and just truck-farm produce.”

He said his ancestors came to America from Italy, where they had been farmers. Once they got established in Grand Junction, Ligrani said, “They were well-respected, well-known.”

They also were charitable, as Ligrani said, “They gave what they could back to the community.”

Ligrani Farm is no more, but Ligrani Lane stems off Rimrock Avenue across from the west-side Walmart amidst all of the retail stores and restaurants that reside where Ligranis once worked the farm fields.

That led Don Ligrani to say, “The old joke is: The last crop planted is always asphalt.”