com
The United States of America is known as 'the land of opportunity' where individuals with dreams and dedication can pursue those dreams and potentially achieve success.
At age 29, James Showalter is the founder and CEO of two companies in Sulphur Springs — Signature Solar and EG4 Electronics.
Earlier this year, Showalter was named EY Entrepreneur of the Year of the Southwest Division of Ernst and Young, LLC, an organization celebrating ambitious visionaries who are leading successful, dynamic businesses in the US and globally. Division winners compete for national recognition in November 2025, and can advance to the EY World Entrepreneur See of the Year competition.
In June, Showalter talked about his industries in an interview for the Sulphur Springs News-Telegram’s “Down Home Today” podcast. Below is from that question and answer segment:
Enola Gay Mathews: Your company, Signature Solar, has become a national leader in the solar supply market, and EG4 Electronics is now a global leader in the design and manufacture of next-generation solar energy storage systems. How did you come to launch your ideas and home base your industries in Sulphur Springs, Texas?
James Showalter: I have lived in Sulphur Springs since I was 14 years old, and I turned 29 this month. I really came of age in this community and got my first chance here. I started out with a pretty simple idea: I want people to be able to make their own power for cheaper than they’ve been buying it, and in places that they previously didn’t have access to power. I want to see electricity democratized, using technology to where more people have more power for less money, and in more places. I was homeschooled, so quickly, I was able to graduate early and go straight to work in this economy. I ran a hardware store, Atwoods, and met most of the people here over a period of a couple of years. One of my fondest memories was from my teens, where at ages 16 and 17, I would get side hustles on weekends, like splitting firewood and putting up barbed wire fences. I was getting out into the woods in Hopkins County and doing honest work, and just working with the good people who run our ag community here. I found that just amazing.”
EGS: Please share with us about the first industry you started, and when that was.
JS: I ran a pretty good fence-building operation with my five brothers. We did barbed wire fencing and focused on time efficiency. The fun part was, I mean, no one wants to do barbed wire fencing, so it was boring/interesting! But because we were faster than most people, we had a cost advantage while delivering a comparable product. The only industry I have is making solar power affordable for people. I’ve only had one of them in my life. I think I am one of these reluctant people who wanted to make a change, and I realized I’d have to become an entrepreneur to do it. I probably would have preferred to be a professor or something else, but I just felt like nothing would happen if people didn't get their hands dirty, and so I just gave up on waiting for someone else to do this.”
EGM: What other companies or industries have you followed and which are located in Sulphur Springs?
JS: EG4 Electronics and Signature Solar are really very big. I think we have over 400 people working for us here in Hopkins County. Also, my brother Adam took over my install company, now called SignaTech Solar, and he has fifteen or more people working with him. He does installations here, like I started doing over ten years ago. And we are doing some work in Commerce, Texas. So, close by, we have people from this county going to work there on a factory operation that we set up there, in order to move our manufacturing here from overseas.'
EGM: Could you share a little more about that venture?
JS: We took what was previously the Covidien plant and Tyco Electronics. Commerce had those highly- skilled, blue-collar manufacturing jobs, which were good middle-class jobs for that city, but lost about 700 jobs when the factory got moved to Mexico about 12 years ago. That industry had people from both Hunt and Hopkins counties working there. And we are looking at the future of what we wanted to do, and at the future of the global supply chain, and we thought that with the technology having progressed cost-effectively enough, that whatever the difference is, we can still push forward the way that people want with American- made products. And, with some value-added services, we can create some good middle-class factory jobs instead of throwing the work out in the contractor field where there’s a shortage of people that can operate as cost-effectively in one-off situations.
EGM: Overall I hear you talking about, basically, people who need work, and finding jobs.
JS: I think the key thing is creating opportunities where people can afford mortgages. Sulphur Springs has 2-3% unemployment. It’s not that there aren’t jobs here; the question is, are there jobs where you can end up doing better than where you started. Right? And so I think that’s one of the problems that are cutting against the rural communities in Texas. We have an advantage of reduced cost of living here in many cases, but at the same time, it is hard to find a job that equivalently will let you pay the bills and put money away for the kid’s future. Ultimately, we want to create a path to where a well-trained employee can do the work for us and be able to afford a home here.'
EGM: Let’s talk about your Sulphur Springs location briefly. This was our mall here in Sulphur Springs until a few years ago, and now it’s your Signature Solar complex.
JS: Yeah! I think it's an interesting microcosm of the future hitting rural Texas. Obviously, the trend away from the brickand- mortar retail, which was very strong here for 40 years, had created a lot of great opportunities. But the trend away was unstoppable, and the people in Sulphur Springs voted with their wallets to move away from as much brickand-mortar retail. So, we took this facility which was the economic driver, and we tried to turn it into specialized parts retail. On the Signature Solar side (of the industry) our product is a high enough ticket purchase and a personalized purchase, that you could actually bring people in to work, and it fits that format well. So we have matched a business model to the infrastructure that we had, and then added high-focus fulfillment and product applications already in tech support. So we were able to take the shift of where the future had brought us to, and fit it in with old infrastructure that the town has depended on in the past, in a really symbiotic way. It’s been a very, very good thing to see.'
EGM: Was there a person in your early life who inspired your desire to build something meaningful for your home community?
JS: Actually, it was probably one of my first fence customers, a guy in Como, Texas named Bill Hatch, who passed away about four years ago. When I was running the hardware store, I was loading up some barbed wire for Bill, and he asked me if I could come out on the weekend and help him put the fence up. He was an humble guy, also a very successful entrepreneur, making his first million in the 1960s when he was 28 years old. He’d kept his life running in a way which he wasn’t extravagant, and he really cared about people. So, he just shadowed me as I did all that fencing work with my brothers, and he kind of shared some of his background and mentalities he’d learned along the way. I think that was a good lightbulb moment for me, that somebody was paying attention to technically, a small business on the side, a hustle business, and realizing how far the rabbit hole could go…and how you could actually make an impact on helping the people that you sold to, while bringing a lot of people along the way to help you build that. For me, that was just, I think, the discovering of potential. I’d say that he probably was the guy that turned the lights on”.
EGM: You’re obviously a visionary, and so, jumping ahead, what is your biggest dream for the world during your lifetime?
JS: Well, I think I’ve probably only got so much time to really be at the lead of anything, and then somebody, hopefully, will come up. But the thing I really want to get done while we are up in the air and really growing, is tha I want to irreversibly change power technology so that people can know way more about it and feel much more empowered to reconsider the options and to build their own solutions and do better than the centralized energy grid that we were born with out here.'
EGM: What kept you motivated during any tough times as your industry first started out?
JS: Two very different things. First out, I had brothers, and we weren’t from a background that would have an easy path to college. So as far as succeeding at biz and creating an opportunity, we weren't looking for whatever jobs that were left in the community. Creating better options for them was a great motivation, a very strong motivation, and that takes you only so far. There are entrepreneurs who are never off the scarcity hook, where they’re hooked on, ‘Oh! I’ve got to do it for my family, or friends, or whatever’. Beyond that, and since then, I’ve compartmentalized. I’ve paid myself what I need to be able to live simply, and then, I think every thing else is just an opportunity to pursue a relatively pure dream. And if the dream pays off and there’s money at the end, that’s great, and if I meet my competition that outdoes me, and in many ways flatters me by doing what I could do but better, I can be the one who got them attracted them to the light in the first place, so they can go and take it from me. That's the direction that we take. As long as we are taking steps in the direction of our goal, and not letting the other noise stop us, I am absolutely certain that we are over the target in terms of creating economic value, and that ultimately we are on the right path to success. But I don't attach my personal identity to the dollars and cents of revenue we are getting on any given day or the profit that we are making. But in terms of my innovative streak or competitive streak, I absolutely get to work to make those look as good as possible.
EGM: When you talk about creating jobs for this community, it seems to come from your heart.
JS: We’re going to create, I think, waves of job opportunities over the next several years, both in Sulphur Springs and in Commerce. Both are a drivable distance for anyone in our area. We'll be looking for people who understand what we're doing enough to be passionate about what we’re doing, or can develop that while they’re here, whether or not they come in with that. In general, I think Energy education as a general interest will help them get the big picture. Learning what their power bill is made up of, and how energy works, and knowledge of it as general interest will help in terms of job applications. We are really trying to crack into a century- old monopoly of energy, and we plan to create products and devices that can decentralize the business model back into the hands of the consumer! So, that’s a good guiding light behind everything we do, and people who are connected with that concept will be able to lead over here, and not just punch a clock, which is something that we are very excited about.
EGM: So, let’s delve into that locally..how will your industry will be playing a role in the future of our area over the next 5-10 years?
'There’s a really heavy STEM focus on what we are doing, and some other employers are moving in that direction. Our DNA is intrinsically STEM. I think we are E\\elevating the idea of STEM employability in our high school and education systems in this community. We want to be here to help those education systems move into a really challenging century, where we are intersecting with the impact of Artificial Intelligence and a rapidly changing landscape. We want to be able to elevate these clear opportunities on the receiving side of a high school process, so we try to speak to what changes and effects can be made in that process to get the kids ready to take jobs that will improve their futures in this economy.'
EGM: For young people who are just starting to thinking about their futures? How do you see it shaping the future
JS: You probably cannot do better than Sulphur Springs, Texas for starting to pursue your dream.
This place does not crimp you or out-regulate you. You can start doing something on a small basis and be in control of that, just like I did. Don’t give up on our community. Great place to live great. We have the full breath of human knowledge available to us here through the Internet, and we have as good a transportation infrastructure as Dallas. We have one thing they don’t have is the freedom of low-risk cost to start, and a community that will actually have your back. What I want to tell people is, this is a much better place to live if you're willing to not live as a victim.
EGM: What does home mean to you after all you have accomplished as of mid-2025?
JS: A fishing hole to clear my mind, splitting firewood in the winter, and to just unplugging and resetting out here. I think this place means home to me and my wife. It’s a calming feeling that also gives me a certain passion to see that we really step into the future here. I really hope that we can give the young people in this community the opportunity so that they can compete in the rapidly changing market. And so, I feel that here, for me, there's a sense of not just identification, but conviction, as well.