Kirk Maust and Dale Gulden
Founders, Solar Direct -- Living and Working for the Triple Bottom Line: People, Planet & Profits
Visitors to the Solar Direct website immediately become aware that they are not just dealing with the ordinary web commerce store or "Big Box Store" mentality in seeking home and commercial solar solutions. Proudly declared at the top of their home page is:
"Solar Direct: Bringing Renewable Energy Technology down to Earth".
This is more than a marketing tagline to Solar Direct. The phrase captures the essence of the founder's beliefs and the company's philosophy.
When Kirk Maust and Dale Gulden started Solar Direct in 1986, the solar industry was just taking its first wing under President Clinton's extensive tax credits. As an engineering student at Pennsylvania State University, Kirk grasped early on that solar energy solutions represented a compelling, environmentally correct technology that people should be using to both power their homes and heat their water. He believed that what the world needed was a technically-savvy company that could aid homeowners and businesses in making the best choices in solar energy products. Kirk knew that the average home owner might be highly interested in environmentally-friendly choices: but they did not have the technical know-how to make a correct decision. Kirk therefore, started to formulate a company that would offer best-of-breed, tested products that homeowners could trust to be reliable.
In the early 80's, Kirk met up with Dale Gulden, marketing and sales- oriented guy who had been promoting rock concerts and who now wanted to deploy his marketing skills toward solar energy's environmentally responsible cause. Like Kirk, Dale believed in solar energy's potential as an alternative to carbon-based electricity and water-heating products. But he knew that the key was not just great reliable engineering of these products, but making these products very accessible to homeowners, who often lacked knowledge of these technically sophisticated products. Dale believed that working with customers personally - on the phones- even in this very web-oriented internet world - was a very important matter. Even today - serving over 30,000 customers worldwide - Dale maintains a personal "on the phone" presence with customers, hand-holding them through complex solar installations. Because of this Dale's philosophy to offer "profoundly great" customer service, Solar Direct's meteoric revenue growth stemmed greatly from repeat customer business.
Dale was so dedicated to the solar product's cause, that he soon got his whole family involved: Cindy, his wife, became the office manager for Solar Direct, helping in coordinate the growing company's daily complex activities. Sheila, Dale's daughter, became involved in Solar Direct logistics, ensuring that products were available and shipped in a timely manner to customers. As Dale says "Promoting solar energy- good for the planet and people- is in our family DNA".
The result of this pairing of talent to provide energy products that serve the planet well?: From 2003-2004, Solar Direct services grew over 130% , providing online buyers with over 350 products, ranging from water conserving devices to solar pool heaters, solar water heaters to solar cookers. Their reputation has grown such that over 2000 per day visit their web site.
The company is proud that over the 20-year history of the company, their solar-based product shipments have contributed to significant savings in polluting carbon emissions. Considering all the solar pool heaters, solar electricity (photovoltaic) and solar water heating solutions the company has sold and installed 1.2 Billion KW Hrs or carbon-based emissions have been avoided. This is equivalent to removing 487,000 passenger vehicles off the road for one year.
Kirk and Dale have extended the company's mission to support planet-friendly activities in others ways. The company has a strong recycling policy, encouraging all employees to recycle all products involved in its daily operations and shipping of products worldwide. Moreover, for several years, the company's website has promoted The Apollo Alliance, a non-profit organization that encourages energy independence - offering free promotion on key web pages. In 2005, believing that increasing educational research and development ensures future better solar products for consumer access; Solar Direct contributed $1000 to the Florida International University's Solar Decathlon project.
One of Kirk and Dale's favorite solar technology projects was working with the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria. Electricity is a precious resource in almost all West African countries, where black-outs are routine due to poor infrastructure. Nigeria, a prime example, operates at one-third of its installed capacity due to aging equipment. Solar Direct was enlisted to design a large solar thermal installation on the Nigerian Embassy, providing much-needed solar water heating for a five-story 190-office building. This allowed the embassy to reduce use of fossil-fuel based electricity, reduced the overall system load and therefore lowered the size of the Embassy's independent (carbon-emitting) power plant. Good for the people and the Earth!
Solar Direct is proud to have worked with many other non-profit organizations in furthering the adoption of solar technology products as part of their own environmental efforts. These include: Boys Scouts of America, Florida Park Service- Lake Louisa State Park, the US Geological Survey and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
