Vibrant Solar in Denver Colorado: All About Vibrant Solar
Posted by carrie_roll
I met Mark Simmons, the VP of marketing and sales for Vibrant Solar (here in Colorado), at the Denver Green Festival, and asked him if he would share the background of their company with members of the GreenJoyment community.
Here is some information about Vibrant Solar. Perhaps if you are thinking of starting a solar company, their story will be inspirational to you.
If you are in Colorado and in need of a solar installer, take a look at Vibrant Solar.
Vibrant Solar, Inc. started in Spring 2006. The founders are old friends who have a variety of disciplines. One, Steve McCormick is an engineer and general contractor, who, with co-founder Scott VanKirk had been working on green building- straw bail construction and the like. But when Amendment 37 passed launching Xcel Energy’s solar photovoltiac (PV) rebates program, they knew a marketplace for strong green technology had opened up. The next involved a few trail installations and learning everything possible about PV. Scott had been a software engineer so both Steve and Scott had the skill set to absorb the technical details very well.
Peter Frost joined the company in late 2006 on the installations side. Mark Simmons and his wife Karen Fields joined in April 2007. This completed the original team of old friends. Between them they could handle all phases of sales, marketing, project management, paperwork, accounting and project completion. Vibrant took off.
Sales beat the 2007 projection by triple, and again tripled in 2008, to just over $6 million. Growing pains were tremendous, with all the normal challenges of a booming company- finding the right staff, training them, keeping up with cash flow, and dealing with both an expanding work flow and all the surprises of a new, small industry. One large ongoing challenge is that each city and county has different requirements for building permits for solar, as there has been nothing in the UBC or NEC about solar. Final inspections sometimes represented different requirements than the permit, making for retroactive problems to solve. It’s been crazy, but exhilarating.
By late 2008 Vibrant Solar had 42 staff. The friends ares till friends, having found that they can work quite well together. “it’s never easy,” states Mark, “to mix business and friendship. We succeed because we respect each other and look at each situation as a team of problem solvers. And we have been very fortunate in choosing good staff.”
Vibrant got into commercial solar during summer 2007. It’s a darned good thing, as residential solar collapsed with the economy last Fall. Residential is slowly recovering but commercial remains strong. Vibrant has installed for some well-known companies such as First National Bank in Boulder and Lockheed Martin in Chatfield. Right now though they are installing on even higher profile locations including the Denver Botanic Gardens and three metro area Red Robin restaurants.
All the daily stresses of any business are with us, but we truly love what we do. We know it makes a real difference. Each residential system reduces carbon emissions by some 18,000 pounds per year, and commercial reduces at least twice that. We’ve installed nearly 200 systems, over a megawatt of solar. So it’s a pretty good day’s work.
Best,
Mark Simmons
Vice President
Marketing & Sales
Vibrant Solar, Inc.
2610 Tennyson St
Denver CO 80212
Office 303-604-6696
Cell 720-985-8522
Fax 303-835-4165
www.vibrantsolar.com
3 Responses to “Vibrant Solar in Denver Colorado: All About Vibrant Solar”
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Golam Mostafa says:
I was so amazed to read the text written by Mark Simmons
Vice President, Marketing & Sales,Vibrant Solar, Inc. about the Vibrant Solar. I would like to thank him also. Wish you all the best. -
Andrew says:
I live in South Africa . Coal that powers our stations is going to get finished
Its wonderful and amazing to learn the history of success of Vibrant Solar in Denver Colorado. I was pretty impressed by the literature of the text written about the Vibrant Solar. I would like to thank Mr. Jonathan to be very sincere to reply back to my mail. I would like to have his communications in future. Thanks and wish you all very good luck to you.