We received the preliminary attendee list for the upcoming NAED Eastern Region, its online for those whose who registered for the conference, to be held in Marco Island, and were very disappointed to see that the conference is evolving (or devolving?) into a national distributor conference.
Of the 52 distributor companies that have registered to date, 16 are entities of national chains. This represents 37% of the distributor attendees. Or think of it this way, from Maine to Maryland and out to Ohio, only 36 independent distributors have registered to date!
So the question becomes … where are the independent distributors who are the bastion of the industry? In an industry with over 3000 distributors, and a top 200 that represents 60%+ of sales) but has only has nine major distributors (CED, WESCO, Graybar, Gexpro, Rexel, Crescent, WinWholesale, USESI and Sonepar (and yes, we know that Rexel and Gexpro are related as are CED and USESI)), where are the rest?
This is no fault of NAED. Perhaps it is more an indication of indifference by independent distributors that the association can help them expand their horizons; seek opportunities; and is worthy of their support. Or if they want something different (change in direction? different services? etc), perhaps they need to talk to BOD members and lobby for change.
It appears, at least from the serminar descriptions, that the there should be something for everyone in the seminars, let alone the opportunity to catch up with either manufacturers that are not at the marketing group meetings or manufacturers that distributors do not have meetings with at their marketing groups (and no, checks are not handed out at the marketing groups – payments are usually via EFTs).
And, for all of the people who say “meetings don’t have value”, it is usually the more successful companies that attend the meetings. Presumably they learn something at the meetings … either from seminars, from hallway interactions with peers or possibly from an encounter with a manufacturer. And if you consider companies that have sold successful businesses in the past 10 years, a very high percentage of them were active and attended NAED conferences.
Yes independents have their marketing groups (over 1100 belong to groups), however, marketing groups do not provide all of the support that a distributor needs. If one looks hard enough, one can find value in many things.
And yes the economy may play into a company’s decision on how many people to send, however, 1) if there is a will there is a way (the out of pocket expenses do not need to be significant) and 2) the travel costs (air and hotel) to attend this year’s Eastern are less than previous years.
If manufacturers continue to see declining attendance, at some point they may question how many people they should send (further reducing attendance and trivializing the conference) and eventually not attend at all.
So, why do you think more independent distributors are not attending and what could be done to generate interest?
6 Comments
Same old bull…get the big distributors and manufacturers to pay the freight.
We’ve found it to better if we attend EDN-Equity.
As a 2nd-tier manufacturer, too much time, effort, and money is spent attending NAED regional meetings for the visibility, or lack of, we receive from the national and regional chains. We realize a higher value with electrical independents and specialty lighting distributors. In tight economic times, we have better things to do with our limited financial and human resources than beg for limited or no face time with the big boys. We’ve adopted a “bottom up” approach, working hard at the local level, driving market demand, entering new markets, providing quality service. We don’t expect or need NAED to help us wiht this.
The Country Club distributors really don’t want electrical independents at NAED….cuts into their golf time at fancy resorts.
As a $45M Independent electrical distributor, I see little to no value in the following:
1. Meetings and speakers that are for much larger distributors
2.Over priced resorts with expensive travel to remote spots.
3.The President of NAED talks in language that is foriegn to business people who actually have sell product and service customers.
For right now we get more value from a buying group that deals with revenue generation and growing our business.
Il Distributor that is not part of the Country Club group.
With NAED giving away free or distorted free memberships for a year, one would assume that they are not able to communicate any sort of value. Not good from our view point.
Aside from not NAED being in contact with real world distributor business problems, they have become impotent. They just seem to want to glorify the NAED president and suck up to large distributors. That’s fine if that is what the business model is for NAED.
We’ll spend our money developing distributor business with the buying groups that offer a business friendly atmosphere.
From another 2nd tier manufacturer.
I understand from your topic that you are trying to help NAED….it won’t happen in it’s current form.
Hey guys, the NAED thing for us is not of value. We’d like to be part of the mix, but there is no ROI that we can see.
Virtually all the ‘services’ they offer, we can get either somewhere else for less money or really can get by without.
The ‘supplier scorecard’ is not in the best spirit of getting along. Who ever dreamed that up?
If the vendor/supplier is unable to deliver, we can make that choice on our own.
This call we hear ‘For the good of the industry’ is like a bailout for the very guys who tried to sell us those sub-prime ‘stocks’.
SPA’s are a sham for getting into the distributor’s pocket and curtailing their cash flow in hope’s that some won’t claim back.
Just ship the product on time, give us a net price, stop monkeying with the marketing funds
and let’s sell product together.
Missouri ED….
No truer words could be spoken.
Just give us a net even if it varies amoung different branches.
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