NAED President Tom Naber has kicked off the opening ceremony at the NAED Eastern Regional Conference with the announcement that NAED is launching the DataFirst Program. It is designed to help distributors update their websites with data about the products they sell. The program is available through DataGility, a company out of Illinois that will help you improve the data on your website.
Chairwoman of the NAED board Sandy Rosecrans says it is extremely important to attend meetings like the NAED Eastern Regional Conference, and the education and workshops offered there, because it will help you learn more and in the end, help you bottom line.
“My theme is often about the bottom line, but it is people who make that bottom line happen,” Rosecrans says, “What sets us apart from the competition like Lowe’s, Home Depot, and Amazon is the people who work at city electric and their ability to meet the needs of our customers.”
Eastern Region Vice President Mark Malvizzi has a strong message about disaster preparedness. Malvizzi lost his family home in a hurricane as a child, and is currently the fire chief in his home town. He has seen disasters both big and small take their toll on businesses. But he says if you plan ahead, you can recover much more quickly.
“1 in 4 businesses that are hit by a natural disaster never re-open. 93% of companies that lost data centers for 10+ days file for bankruptcy within 1 year,” Malvizzi reports. He strongly recommends you develop your disaster plan today, and stop putting it at the bottom of your to-do list.
Peter Sheahan: “After 15 hours of researching electrical distribution, I have come to the conclusion that all of you are going through some significant change.”
In talking about the threat from Amazonsupply.com’s threat to electrical distribution, Sheahan says, “Change is actually really slow. Until it starts going really fast.” He says while there is the assumption that Amazonsupply.com won’t be a tremendous threat, along comes Amazon’s yearly $200+ million dollar increases in sales.Sheahan points out the time to react to Amazonsupply.com is now, while you margins are strong, and not later when they are not as strong.
Sheahan also says he has looked at the NAED DataFirst program, and thinks it is essential to be a part of it.
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