NARMS Future is Bright

As I share my thoughts as chairman for the final time, it is with great pride that I say THANK YOU to the NARMS Executive Committee, full Board of Directors and respective committee members and chairs. It is primarily because of the passion and belief in the organization by these individuals that NARMS continues to grow and evolve and that’s quite exciting.

I am also excited about some current projects of focus by our board of directors. Shortly NARMS will be extending a Return on Investment (ROI) market research project that will be the largest single investment that NARMS has ever made in research in our decade of existence.
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Getting Branded Doesn’t Have to Hurt!

Over recent months, NARMS has started efforts to establish a “branding” identity for your trade association. We’re using a customized “star treatment” along with the NARMS acronym to link the diversity of our association and have spiced up our color scheme a bit by adding yellow to go along with the traditional blue. We think this look can become “iconic” while representing diversity yet transcending the credibility, respect and retail service industry leadership that NARMS is known for.
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If you build it, Who will come?

With spring training in full swing and the regular baseball season not far off, I was recently reminded of my love for baseball as I happened across the ending of one of my favorite movies, Field of Dreams, for the umpteenth time on television. You remember, “If you build it, he will come?” Of course it takes a trip to the movie’s climatic final scenes to finally find out the “he” that actor Kevin Costner’s character (Ray Kinsella) is searching for.
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NARMS News

Global Shop Adjustments
“Which do you want to hear first, the good news or the bad news?” goes the phrase we may often hear.

Such is the case for the Global Shop special effort proposed by NARMS, featuring the Town Center Pavilion with 14 NARMS member companies sharing the space cooperatively. Since only one of our member companies stepped forward to try that venue, we have been forced to discontinue that offer for the show at the end of March.
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Get More … Stay Involved

Hopefully by now you have all made your arrangements to attend the 11th Annual NARMS Spring Conference in beautiful Amelia Island. The agenda for this year is very exciting. We have excellent general sessions and keynote speakers, a wide variety of workshops to choose from, breakfast sessions, NARMS Super Session #2 with Mark Hunter again moderating, exhibitor booths and a Florida Beach Party as the closing event.

Our Manufacturers’ Advisory Board meeting will be held on Saturday, April 1st from 6 to 8 p.m., and is open to all manufacturers in attendance at spring conference. The manufacturer session on Sunday, April 2nd from 3:45 to 6:00 p.m., has been renamed as NARMS Super Session #1. We again have Bryan Gildenberg from Management Ventures Inc., who will now be available to a much larger audience. With the popularity of last year’s session and Bryan’s wealth of information and industry insight we’ve also expanded the time slot.
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Innovation is the Key

Debit cards, audits, manager signatures, sales “quotas”, report forms, deductions, inch-thick guidelines, on-call staff, beepers, cell phones, online reporting, “cash approval”, endless changes, IVR systems - You have really ask yourself, “Are we in the banking industry?” It sure sounds like it. Some of you may silently respond: “Yes, we are, Todd! We are now financing demos sometimes up to sixty days and beyond! I call that being a bank.” True, but seriously, it makes one wonder: Have we lost our focus? Are we acting more like bankers than marketing and promotion professionals?
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MSO Workshops Better than Ever

By the time you receive this newsletter, I can only hope you have already made reservations and plan to attend the 2006 spring conference at warm and sunny Amelia Island, FL. If you haven’t, you risk living the life of the cast of the television show, “Lost”.

The MSO committee has put together another great line-up for our educational workshops, with an emphasis on real world topics for all MSO companies in today’s marketplace! Here’s a brief summary of the MSO program agenda:
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Top-to-Top Conference to Launch Advisory Group

We’re currently gearing up for our Top-to-Top Executive Conference on May 4-6 in Chicago. We expect to have 75 brokers in attendance and some 100 manufacturers at our third annual conference bringing IFBA members together with manufacturer leaders.

Our IFBA Committee will meet on the afternoon of May 4 with the conference opening with a reception that evening. Friday activities include a business luncheon and networking reception with Saturday’s business session program to feature a major retailer prior to our final reception. This entire event precedes the Food Marketing Institute (FMI) show, a major annual food industry gathering in Chicago.
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PIC Conference Sessions for Information and Networking

The Annual Meeting & Conference for 2006 is fast approaching. It promises to be an exciting agenda with more than a little for all of us. If you have not already made your plans to attend please check go to www.narms.com to review the conference agenda, process your registration and make your lodging arrangements. By then we should be able to enjoy the beautiful Florida weather and maybe even get a little tan to take home with us. With Global Shop staged in Orlando and our NARMS meeting being so close together both geographically and time wise; it will save us all the cost of another airline ticket and let us northerners escape to a sunny climate and hopefully take some spring weather home with us.
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Trading Up, Business Process Excellence in Retail Merchandising

Boom!

It’s 2006 and technology is finally mature! If you’re skimming this article, you may want to put it down until you have time to get comfortable and really absorb it, because what follows is an incredible journey of how far we, as an industry, have come.

Let’s start with PDA’s. They’re cheap! There is no reason why the average company can not afford them when they cost fifty cents per hour, and they save more than they cost. They’re reliable, they work much like people’s home computers, and they form the platform of all of the incredible technology detailed here. If you’re not using them, you’re behind, and need to seriously consider what is written below.
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