The value of a generator became quickly apparent to every resident in Texas as the Arctic winds descended southward. Jessica Keller and her husband have been running Grasten Generators in Houston for 12 years, and business has been doing extremely well, building nicely, a lot of orders on the books for January. “In January we tripled our numbers from last January, and we were having a pretty great month. And then the storm hit.”
They had generators to live and work off of, she says, and used that ability to help everyone they could, whether they were clients or had bought their generators elsewhere.Keller says one of their greatest services was to answer their phones, which were ringing non-stop with desperate Houstonians. They had full staff making service calls as quickly as they could everywhere they could.
The phone hasn’t stopped ringing since. “Last month we received an entire 23 leads,” she explains, indicating that they pay for leads, and get a lot of client referrals in addition to paid advertising. “This month we’ve already received 1,712 leads.”
It’s not just Houston, and not just Texas. Historic wildfires tore through California, causing widespread and extended power outages. The 2019 Hurricane Season was historic. Winter has been brutal for many even before the Arctic Chill that swung south to Texas last week. Generator manufacturers have been seeing an impressive growth trend as demand increases, Keller saying they were having trouble finding enough product to fill orders in December.
That leads us to the poll question this morning: