MARTA Meeting In Florida
By Steve Smith -- TWICE, 3/8/2004
ORLANDO, FLA.— MARTA Cooperative of America (MARTA) will hold its annual spring meeting at the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center, here, this week.
Executive director Warren Mann said that he expects over 400 attendees at the show, which began yesterday and will run through Wednesday, March 10. Mann said that 90 percent of the organization's 106 members will be represented and that the buying fair will feature over 50 major appliance, consumer electronics and other exhibitors.
Among the exhibitors are Transamerica, Electrolux, NEW, Whirlpool, Sharp Electronics, Thomson, GPX, JVC, Toshiba, GE Appliances, GE Business Credit Services, Coby, LG Electronics and Maytag.
Mann said that in the past year MARTA has added "around ten new members, which is unusual for us" and that the group's total sales are now "over $2 billion."
This year MARTA wants to use its expanded buying clout by centering on a select group of suppliers in consumer electronics and major appliances.
Mann wants MARTA to become more important to those manufacturers and the strategy behind it is simple. "When product gets tight, especially in CE, what we are trying to do is focus on specific brands and become more important to specific suppliers."
For full coverage of the MARTA convention, see the March 22 issue of TWICE.
