The Start of the NAED Meeting Season – Observations from Marco and the NAED Eastern

Earlier this month NAED started its meeting season with the NAED Eastern, which was held in Marco Island.  Meeting attendance appeared to be somewhat “challenged” as the AD and IMARK annual meetings directly preceded the NAED meeting and Rockwell’s  Automation Fair was the following week.

While Electrical Marketing, in its meeting observation article, shared that there were 543 meeting registrants, 86 were either service providers or manufacturer reps (48!).  According to the registration list there were 162 distributor registrants and 295 manufacturer registrants.

Some observations:

• Most were “pleased” with their year and distributors were optimistic (although those in the New England area were the most “neutral” about their business and don’t expect much growth for 2019.)
• Manufacturers are talking about 3-6% growth next year.
• Those in the lighting business are hedging their bets regarding 2019 growth as they know that performance will be colored by tariffs … but they don’t know by how much.
• All lighting manufacturers are expected to institute another increase due to tariffs that are expected to come online in January. Longer-term, they “doubt” that price corrections will equal the level of any tariff decrease … all expecting to have some net positive price impact and then they will adjust based upon market / competitive pressures.
• Didn’t hear much regarding the NAED seminars due to limited attendance in the workshops except:
  • Customer experience speaker was good but needed to be more relevant based upon electrical distributor audiences.
  • NAED promoted its Market Data initiative, providing an update from a year ago and stumping for distributor support (there is no manufacturer offering at this time.) During the general session Tom Naber also appealed to distributors to 1) learn more and 2) understand how market data can be used to help them grow their business (and better understand their business / marketplace.)
  • The general session was “interesting”.
    • Tom exhorted attendees to donate to the association to support continued development of training and research tools. And he also emphasized their opportunity to use these tools to improve their businesses and invest in their people. Given that there were less than 55 main house distributors in attendance, hopefully these principals heard the message as it is the distributors who should be investing the most in their association’s tools.
    • Heard very mixed about the keynote speaker. While the topic was relevant (the need to invest in digital transformation), the topic has been communicated to distributors and manufacturers many times before.
      • Additionally, the speaker was from Cap Gemini … a very large consulting firm … who spoke more to senior management at large manufacturers (and used examples from these types of companies) and talked, in some people’s opinion, “over” the audience. It was tough for many distributors and non-decision-makers to relate to the presentation (and the speaker had very busy slides that were difficult to read and an accent that required attendees to focus.
    • Much conversation regarding eCommerce. Conversations related to inquiries about eCommerce platforms and a desire for alternative platforms to emerge / be recommended; distributors recognizing that better (more complete) product content is needed to effectively compete in the eCommerce space; and some manufacturers inquired about eCommerce authorization, content usage / branding and pricing strategies.
    • Heard
      • Square D by Schneider Electric joined AD in Canada
      • Rab decided to pull back from the Canadian market. Reportedly sales were not significant.  Additionally, Rab shared that they are launching a lamp line in 2019.
      • A few distributors that will be announcing acquisitions by the end of the year and a manufacturer who expects to announce an introduction shortly.

And it was the NAED Eastern finale for some industry stalwarts … Dave Bucklew from Eaton, Steve Antenucci from Hubbell Wiring Devices and Ken Hooper from NEMRA (and previously Mersen) who retires in June.  Good luck to all of them and thank you for your contributions to the industry.

If you attended, thoughts on how productive the meeting was for you? Any trends you heard or supplier insights?

(And sorry for the delay in posting the article. Busy with client travel then family vacation … and happy belated Thanksgiving to all.)