Clearwater, Fla. – Fresh-Aire UV, Jupiter, Fla., the largest manufacturer of carbon/PCO, and UVC indoor air quality (IAQ) products in North America, celebrated a 10-year partnership anniversary with Clearwater, Florida based Victor Distributing Co.

Kevin Barnum, CIE, vice president for the 50-year-old, privately-held HVAC distributor, received the partnership plaque that honors Victor’s continuing business loyalty and sales successes selling Fresh-Aire UV's BlueTube, AHU Series, APCO lifetime carbon system and commercial products over the last decade.

“A 10-year partnership selling IAQ products is a great milestone, and not typical in today’s HVAC wholesaling environment,” said Ron Saunders, VP of sales, Fresh-Aire UV.

Victor is one of Fresh-Aire UV’s top HVAC wholesalers and a renowned IAQ outlet. “They are extremely well educated on IAQ and they are the go-to place for solving the air purification challenges contractors meet on a daily basis,” Saunders said.                

Partnering with Fresh-Aire UV was an outgrowth of Victor’s IAQ concentration after  2000. Barnum sought an easier installing UV product line with remote ballast technology, because the market’s self-contained air cleaning products on the market, at that time, were too bulky and more conducive to northern location HVAC systems in roomy basements.

“There are no basements in Florida, so we sought a more compact air cleaning product where the lamp was installed on the coil, but the ballast could be flexibly installed anywhere outside the unit within a six-foot area,” said Barnum, who has three CIE employees on staff. “Fresh-Aire UV’s lifetime warranty on its power supply helped transform skeptical contractors into believers.”

Thus, Victor began marketing Fresh-Aire UV’s AHU Series in 2005. Victor has since embraced all new Fresh-Aire UV introductions, such as the popular two-year lamp, the dual lamp, 24V Blue Tube UV and now the APCO, an air purification product using carbon/ photocatalytic oxidation and UVC that neutralizes volatile organic compounds (VOC) and disinfects biological contaminants.

Victor and Fresh-Aire UV have been dedicated to making joint sales calls to contractors to offer education and training at their businesses. Therefore the partnership’s next decade will include contractor training on marketing and pricing the product for a strategic deeper IAQ market penetration and higher sales volume. 

“We’re convincing contractors they can do more IAQ business with sensible markups and changing the contractors’ culture to offer modern, affordable UV technology to all consumers,” said Barnum, who opened a new location in South Fort Myers, Florida, in June that adds to his current North Port, Florida and Clearwater branches. “Contractors can always get 10-percent of their customer base to purchase IAQ products at higher markups, but more appropriate mark-ups can raise their market saturation to 40 to 50-percent.”

“UV is now widely accepted as an affordable product that works well for maintaining coils and disinfecting air,” Barnum said. “Fresh-Aire UV and Victor have positioned their companies for the inevitable future sales surge in IAQ equipment.”

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