I was a music student as a kid. Took piano lessons, played saxophone in the band, was a singer in the choir. In each of these musical endeavors, the metronome was involved. If you’re not familiar, or not a musician, a metronome is a device that makes a clicking sound at a regular beat, to make sure that everyone stays on time and the music progresses at the proper speed.
Every once in a while, some wisecracker would crank up the metronome to get the band playing at a ridiculously fast pace, prompting the music teacher to sprout a few bulging blood vessels in frustration. Of course, we all got a good chuckle.
And that got me wondering, did someone turn up the dial on the NASGW’s metronome?
I’m not sporting any enlarged arteries or veins at the moment, thankfully, but it seems like things have been moving in high gear for months. The market has been slower, but organizationally, we’ve been having a very busy year. It’s probably the busiest year I’ve experienced in my time at NASGW. It would seem the metronome is now stuck on presto, which is a fancy Italian musical term for very fast.
We kicked off 2019 with the launch of our SCOPE™ program, and just a couple weeks ago at the Expo, we released version 2.0, with a lot of enhancements and upgrades. We also announced that NASGW will soon begin collecting point-of-sale data to add to our SCOPE platform. When fully integrated, we’ll be able to show the sales channel from manufacturer to end-user. We’re pretty excited about the possibilities. Why? Well, because the information we’re learning is already helping companies make better decisions. And with even more data, we can help make a difference for even more of our members. Learn more at www.nasgwscope.org.
In March of this year, we hosted a variety of our members in a NASGW booth at the IWA Outdoor Classics show in Nuremberg, Germany. That was a first for us as an organization. We introduced a number of companies to the international marketplace. We’re currently working hard to do the same thing in March of 2020. If your company is looking to expand horizons into international markets, reach out to Meg Pawelski (mpawelski@nasgw.org) and consider being a part of our booth for the 2020 event.
Between now and the IWA show, of course, there will be several distributor product shows, the annual Shot Show in Las Vegas, and the annual National Association of Wholesalers meetings in Washington, DC.
Oh, and of course the holidays. How could I forget… the decorations and Christmas candy are already clogging the aisles at the local stores. It seems like that happens a couple of weeks earlier every year. I just shake my head.
In the midst of all this craziness, the high-speed clicking of the metronome, the NASGW is taking time out to think about where we’ve been, and to become very purposeful about where we’re going. If you’ve followed my columns for a few years, you know I often talk about the end of the year as a great reflection period and a time to really lay the groundwork for the future. It’s no different this year.
What is different is that we’re inviting a much larger group of people to help us do so. At the Expo and Annual Meeting in Orlando, the NASGW distributors formed the “NASGW Future Taskforce.” This collective of distributors will be working throughout the year in 2020 to analyze the current landscape in two-step distribution, to consider where we’ve come from, and to really get focused on listening and working with our partners to design plans to bring this organization to the next level for the future.
We’ve got some really talented, gifted, and downright brilliant people in this industry. In the coming months, we’ll be tapping into that talent to outline strategies and goals to make two-step distribution stronger and better than ever. It won’t be easy, but we do plan to make some good music. And whether it’s Presto or Lento, what you hear in the end, we hope, will be music to your ears.
Stay tuned… the next year promises even more “big things” from the NASGW. Thank you for your continued support. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Until next time,
Kenyon Gleason
NASGW President