Charity Begins At Home
By Steve Smith -- TWICE, 11/20/2006
The electronics/appliance industry should be commended for historically being a charitable one.
The most recent case was the annual Anti-Defamation League (ADL) dinner dance held at New York's Hyatt Hotel on Veteran's Day. It seemed as if anyone who is anyone in the consumer electronics business attended. (See p. 17.)
Aside from the laudable mission of ADL, maybe the turnout had to do with the honorees: Con, Eddie and Johnny Maloney of Cowboy Maloney's Electric City and Izzy Schwab of D&H Distributing, who were presented with ADL's American Heritage Award, and Robert Weisner received the S. David Feir Humanitarian Award.
It could have had something to do with the featured speakers and presenters: Best Buy's Brad Anderson, who serves as division chair; dinner chair Warren Mann of World Merchants Buying Group; vice chairs Marcia Grand of TWICE and Eric Schwartz of NAPCO; presenters Sirius chairman Joe Clayton; Dan and Michael Schwab of D&H who presented to father Izzy; and Nationwide's Ed Kelly who presented to partner and brother-in-law Robert Weisner.
To be blunt, sometimes at events such as this the speeches and presentations are not all you thought they'd be, or that they should be. But on this night you had some veteran industry orators involved whose presentations were warm, thought-provoking, inspirational and funny ... sometimes all at the same time.
The ADL awards dinner is a unique gathering on the industry schedule since it is not about business. It is about supporting a civil rights and human rights organization.
This annual event enables industry friends and colleagues to visit one more time before the real crunch time of the electronics/appliance industry begins — the march from Black Friday to the holidays right through to CES and getting back to deal with Super Bowl sales. So it isn't surprising that a little "shop talk" might intrude on the casual conversations during the cocktail party and dinner.
But on this night there was nothing charitable being said in casual conversations about Wal-Mart's recent decision to slash CE prices across the board — from Panasonic's 42W-inch plasma TV, to Kodak digital cameras, Lexmark printers and the rest. (See p. 1.)
Cutting prices in the CE industry is a way of life, and Wal-Mart has raised "value pricing" to an art form. But this move has outraged those manufacturers and retailers who attended the ADL event, and that's putting it mildly. They accuse Wal-Mart and participating suppliers of taking profits off the table for themselves and the entire industry because all sides will react.
The customer always seems to win when it comes to CE pricing moves like this. And, as I said, the industry is charitable. But many manufacturers and retailers would rather choose to take their collective billfolds out themselves and spread the wealth, rather than having their pockets picked prematurely by competitors.
After all, charity begins at home.
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