AD Affiliates and Suppliers Leave Chicago Inspired

  Last week over 1000 attendees converged upon Chicago for Affiliated Distributor’s (AD) Electrical Supply Division North American Meeting.    Channel Marketing Group attended along with 1042 other individuals. The theme of the conference was “Be Inspired.”

Aside from national chain meetings, this is the first major distributor gathering of the “2015 meeting season”.

Some observations:

• The 1043 attendees represented an all-time high for AD’s electrical group.  While there were 173 first time attendees, what caught many manufacturer’s attention is that there were more distributor attendees than supplier attendees (503 vs 477).  This is the first time many manufacturers can remember this occurring in a long time (typically suppliers vastly outnumber distributors at NAED meetings.)
• AD had record performance with $13.2B in distributor revenues (an 8% increase) and a 6% increase in rebate remittances to over $500M, and remember, this is only with 136 distributors! Distributor sales per member is significantly higher than unaffiliated, non-chain distributors.
• The 6 new AD Mexican distributors attended as did Canadian distributors.
• A survey of top AD manufacturers and distributors revealed a 2015 projection of 6-6.5%.  During discussions with manufacturers throughout the meeting, manufacturers are projecting, for the most part, 5-6% increases.  So the data is inline (and consistent with a 2015 survey we’re running).
• We had meetings with a number of distributors and a couple of recurring topics were “what should my expectations of marketing be?”, “what should be the next evolution of my marketing team to get beyond marcom, events and promotions?, discussions re: e-commerce, and growth (with many companies seeking to go beyond their comfort zone and some seeking significant growth (and if you’d like to discuss some of these issues, we’ll be at the various NAED regional meetings, so feel free to reach out to schedule some time.)
• I sat in on a session held by Jim Milne from AD Canada on distributor threats / opportunities.  Some highlights:
  • customer buying patterns are changing
  • to achieve growth, distributors should be looking at enhanced, and more efficient, operational procedures
  • consolidation for all “international / European” companies can be an opportunity for independent distributors
  • In speaking about “the next generation”, he said “There is always a ‘next generation’.  And these generations always think differently.  Perhaps the biggest change with this “next” generation is that the shift feels like it is happening faster.
  • “clean”, “accurate”, “useful” data is critical for everyone’s success as it supports VMI, EDI, marketing, pricing, cost-reduction, eStores and more (and product data appears to be more of an issue in Canada than in the US).
• From a marketing viewpoint, more distributors are expressing interest in content marketing … and going beyond supplier provided “boiler plate” content (which they either get from manufacturer sites or struggle getting rep support)
• Some topical discussions from distributors:
  • much talk about the 3 “lamp” companies (Philips, Sylvania and GE). Discussions re personnel changes, downsizing, concern about company direction, confidence about the directions espoused and questioning if these companies will remain independent (Philips / Sylvania) or become independent (GE) and will any of them survive in their current form over the next 5 years.
  • eStorefronts / distributor eCommerce-enabled websites.  Many are vetting potential suppliers. Distributors discussed data challenges, cost to deploy, openly wonder if they will get an ROI on their sizable investments, who / how they will run these, how they will market these and more.  But most are moving towards something and using providers other than their ERP provider.
  • Eaton and the former “Cooper” companies.  Eaton is nicely “leveraging” the lines through its Advantage program and this is impacting the groups (as we’ve also heard similar from IMARK distributors).
• Regarding 2015 marketing / business planning … it seemed like many distributors had not started this process for 2015 yet, which was surprising (or they weren’t telling the “whole” truth!)

Congratulations to the following AD Award Winners:

• US Affiliate of the Year for Leadership – John Spoor, State Electric
• Best Annual Planning Process Award – Franklin Empire (honorees were Border States and Werner MN)
• Best Conversion to an AD Supplier – Independent Electric and Burndy (honorees were Shealy and Sylvania, Werner and Juno Lighting)
• Supplier of the Year for Marketing Excellence – Leviton (honoree was T&B for its food processing strategy)
• US Affiliate of the Year for Performance – Good Friend Electric, who was also the first AD member! (honorees were Mid State Supply and Electric Supply Center)
• US Supplier of the Year for Performance – Calpipe Industries (honorees were Heritage Plastics / Atkore and BRK)
• Canadian Supplier of the Year for Performance – Philips (honorees were Northern Cables and Eaton, Canada)
• Supplier of the Year for Leadership – Greg Lampert from General Cable
• AD MVP – Christine Ide, Director of Market and Sales Development, North Coast Electric
• Giving Back Award – Steiner Electric (honorees were Earl O’Neil Electric Supply and Thomas & Betts)

Here’s a link to videos of acceptance awards

If you attended, what were your observations and takeaways?