Schedule Changes

If your schedule is anything like ours, once you catch up from all the work created by the hustle and bustle of International CES, you are ready to make your reservations and pack your bags for what I like to call "buying group season."

I was reminded of this when we heard last week that Warren Mann, long-time head of MARTA and a key executive with NATM, went back to his manufacturing roots to take on the sales VP job for the independent channel at Haier America. Haier hired a good Mann. (Ouch. I couldn't resist.)

Well, the "buying group season" has changed. To be absolutely correct, the schedule was altered last year as senior executives and buying groups made some important changes to their organizations.

To walk down memory lane, the buying group meeting lineup from years' past usually went like this: MARTA, Nationwide, HTSA, BrandSource, NATM and PRO Group.

Now if you're reading this at the Nationwide Marketing Group meeting in Orlando this week, and you are a long-time member of the group, you are probably saying, "Changes? What changes?"

But if you are a MARTA member, the opposite is the case. Last year, Mann left and the group merged with BrandSource. MARTA now meets with BrandSource and the combined spring event, along with Home Entertainment Source (HES), will be held in late March in Dallas.

While HTSA holds court in Savannah, Ga., in mid-March, the traditional NATM Buying Group meeting that was always held during the month is no more. Traditionally NATM members and suppliers have usually visited Florida (or Texas or Arizona) to meet and plan for the balance of the year.

NATM members and executive director Bill Trawick decided to move its meeting to avoid that other season — spring line shows — so they will gather in mid-September. While it may be a little disconcerting for this reporter not to meet with NATM in the spring for the first time since I started covering this industry, it makes a lot of sense. Especially when you consider that unlike years ago, NATM and all of these buying groups are in constant contact with their suppliers via the Web.

That leaves the PRO Group, which will hold its usual meeting during early May in Scottsdale, Ariz. Executive director Dave Workman is about to celebrate his first anniversary at the helm of the buying group of which he was a member (Ultimate Electronics) for years.

PRO still sees the need, just like the rest of the industry's buying groups, to sit down with suppliers and fellow members to touch base, place orders, cut deals and exchange ideas. That hasn't changed.

Another thing that hasn't changed as we look back at the past six weeks is that the Super Bowl, which was played the first Sunday in February and at the very end of the model season for TVs, created another round of HDTV price cuts as everyone tried to go after market share, or cut inventory, or both. (See p. 1.)

Schedules may change in this industry, but behavior doesn't.