Barbarians at the Gate?

OK, now they've done it.

It's over. The business as I knew it has been irreparably damaged. Hell, we might as well pack up and leave. Get into a business with a future, like making Arnold Schwartzenegger movies.

PPAI has announced (gasp!) that (double gasp!) end-users will be allowed on the floor of Expo next January. Cue the Locusts, and the Four Guys on Horseback. I mean, END-USERS at Expo? What kind of Area Code 666 deal is this, anyway?

Everybody knows that the sanctity of the supplier/distributor relationship cannot be violated. I mean, what if an end user asks someone what "A" means? And what if the addled supplier actually TELLS them? Our pricing structure will end up in charred ruins.

Have you ever heard such Sam's Wholesale Club-sized baloney in your life?

Everyone is uncomfortable with change. And we all want to find a Time Portal that will whisk us back to 1989, when the business was "closed" and end-users didn't know an "A" from a "B". A quieter time, with less torque and less uncertainty.

Well Bub, that portal got destroyed in the great economic earthquake of 2008. So can we get over that and get on with our lives? The market has undergone such tectonic shifts that it barely resembles what it was 5 years ago. Our trade shows have to evolve as well, or they find themselves like New York, or Chicago--swept away by the tide of a changing business environment.

The value end-users bring is that they are the only link in the chain that actually makes a buying decision. The rest of us do our thing, and derive our living, AFTER the end-user says "I'll take it". Having them interact with us at the largest show in our market is a fundamentally good thing, as they can better understand what we do, how we do it, and how they can benefit from a dialogue with us.

But there's that Fear of the Unknown. "But they'll go around the reseller!" "We'll be marginalized!". Really? Does anyone who's looked hard at it truly believe that an emaciated Corporate Staff can effectively create and execute programs using promotional products and/or reward merchandise? Fat chance.

The rise of the reseller is in perfect alignment with all the "rightsizing" and "downsizing" and outright "whacking" that has occurred inside Corporate America. Resellers exist because end-users USED to have staff to handle all those reward/recognition/identity programs, and today they do not.

Resellers who want to limit dialogue are doing so at their peril. They cannot hold to a concept that they "own" the end-user because they do not. It's not YOUR customer--it's A customer with which you do business. And that customer has more information about product, program, and process than ever. This genie does not go back into the bottle.

I look forward to speaking with end-users next January. Assuming, of course, that Harold Camping isn't right THIS time, and the world actually DOES end on 10/21...


Pete

"It depends..."

My two favorite words in the English Language are "it depends". When I was a consultant, I learned the power of this phrase, how it could render any difficult question much more accessible. "So, how quickly will we see results?", someone would ask. "It depends", I would say, "on this factor, or that one, or these outlying issues nobody can forsee".

It almost always works. It accomplishes two things: 1) it allows you to stall for time as you formulate your response; and 2) it acknowledges the reality that there are no "simple" answers to any issue.

And so it is with our business these days. Talk to any two suppliers, or reps, or customers, and you'll get differing positions on the market. "It depends". I was speaking the other day with a supplier in a different product category and that person said their business was down in 2011 compared to 2010. I shared that my business was up--materially up.

Am I a genius, and the other supplier an idiot (don't even think about reversing the order of those two)? No--"it depends". My product may be "hot" right now, or it may have been a long time since our key clients have promoted us, or any of a thousand other reasons (or any combination of them).

Our resellers are telling us how great their business is. But it may "depend" on how you define "great". I know for sure that many resellers' topline is up--but is that because of their genius, or because they're selling gazillions of iPads at zero margin? Who knows? Who cares? It's all about how things are going in your building that counts.

So when people talk about the market being "good", or "bad", remember--"it depends". Always...


Pete