International. PrimeLines, a provider of engineering solutions for the HVAC industry, began work in November 2017 and in less than 5 years has managed to position itself in the Latin American market. The story behind its success is in the determination of Sergio Flores, its president and founder.
Sergio tells us that he is a mechanical engineer by training and of Venezuelan origin, he says that he has dedicated his whole life to working in HVAC. He explains that he arrived in Miami 26 years ago, when he began working in sales, a great opportunity to earn money, because this Florida city is the door to all of Latin America, but also his best option because there were great difficulties to homologate his degree and get the necessary licenses to continue working directly in that industry. Thus he dedicated himself to working in several companies, where he acquired extensive experience regarding the distribution of merchandise for the industry.
Then he was presented with the possibility of making a joint project with a company in Hong Kong, from which Mesan USA was born, a company that was founded on April 1, 2012, which is dedicated to date to the manufacture of cooling towers for air conditioning. There Sergio focused, with the rest of the team, on developing a distribution network that covers Canada, the United States, Central America, the Caribbean and South America, as well as Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East. With their supplier factory in China, they transport the components to Florida, where the towers are assembled.
Birth of PrimeLines
In 2017, a special circumstance occurred in the HVAC industry, as a technology representative group, very important in sales in Latin America, was acquired by a renowned Asian company, which marked a movement that had not been experienced before in the market. This change made many manufacturers see more attractive the possibility of opening their sales to new distributors, to give more outlet to their products. Then Sergio, who already had more than 22 years of experience at that time, received several contact calls asking if he wanted to return to his role as a factory sales representative and saw the opportunity to unify these needs in a single company. That is, he devised PrimeLines as an independent representative for the different factories based in Miami. The impact of this offer was not long in coming, many companies came forward to be represented, including Mesan USA.
This was the beginning of what was once called PrimeLines LLC, in October 2018. Distributing products in the Area of the English-speaking Caribbean, in other words, the entire territory except Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.
Expansion in Latin America
Over time, new professionals expressed the desire to join the workforce, people with extensive knowledge in the Latin American market, hence Sergio thought of founding PrimeLines LATAM LLC as a specific and differentiated line, although building companions, which soon was responsible for opening local operations in the territory of Latin America.
Sergio told us, in view of the presence of his company in the territory: "we have an office in Peru, with approximately 20 employees. Now, in Colombia we entered the time of the pandemic, so we have staff in operational tasks, but all in telework, there is no office as such; our team there is made up of different people in Valledupar, Medellín, Barranquilla and Bogotá, so we have that territory divided into 4 zones, with a manager in each city."
As news, he told us that last February they began their presence with personnel located in Panama and that there are expansion plans to reach Ecuador and Chile. Regarding this, he told us that he already has both brands for these markets and the profiles of possible representatives.
Impact and added value of PrimeLines
Within the package of solutions offered by this company we can name Greenheck, Xylem, Mesan, Price, Polaris, Eurovac, Taco Comfort Solutions, Berner, Imperial Systems, Air Filters and Radiant, among others.
In addition to this long list of brands Sergio Flores told us that they have a service similar to a "shopping office", because there are organizations or integrators that due to their location have difficulties to buy in the United States, because they do not grant them credit and must make all payments in advance. "We, being an American company, located in Miami, have a line of credit service where we help our well-known customers acquire the products they need and charging within 30 days."
Sergio ends by explaining that "the other particularity of our business is that the type of product we sell you can not buy on Amazon or Ebay, they are products that require a certain degree of engineering knowledge, to be able to determine what the buyer needs. So at PrimeLines we are engineering consultants, where that service is an added value in the purchase accompaniment."
