Total Store Expo (TSE), that annual gathering that the National Association of Chain Drug Stores convenes each summer — this year’s event is scheduled for San Diego in midsummer — has been steeped in debate, questions and controversy since it replaced the very popular and well-attended Marketplace Conference several years ago. At the heart of the debate is this simple question: Is this meeting really necessary?
The position on these pages, one that MMR’s editors have long espoused, can be summed up in one declamatory word: YES.
The charges long hurled at TSE revolve around retailer attendance, or, phrased another way, the absence of the key component that renders all NACDS events as must-attends. Put another way, a handful of suppliers, accustomed to finding fault with all association gatherings, insist that the summer event has become, in recent years, unnecessarily dominated by pharmacy, with a resulting fall-off in health and beauty representation. Whether this accusation is true or not (it is, to some degree), that’s not the issue here. Rather, the key point in this as in all NACDS meetings throughout the year is that they successfully bring buyers and sellers together. And that, after all, is the primary reason the supplier community joins, supports and lauds NACDS: In the association’s unrivaled success in introducing and encouraging buyers and sellers to spend time together, no organization surpasses NACDS.
Beyond that unassailable but sometimes disputed fact, TSE is valuable for, among other things, once again bringing together an industry which, in recent times, has shown signs of neglecting this critical object that is at the very core of the mass retailing agenda. Forget, for a moment, about the object of writing, verifying or increasing an order, solidifying a relationship or forming a new friendship, critical as those achievements have always been. Substitute, if you will, the accomplishment of meeting a new acquaintance at dinner or exchanging business cards or agreeing to a meeting at some future date at the retailer’s headquarters, preceded or followed by lunch or dinner.
Is that anticipatory transaction worth the trip to San Diego, Boston or Fort Lauderdale? You bet it is.
Now, armed with this newly acquired knowledge, peruse the list of retailer attendees at the upcoming TSE in San Diego. Notice, for example, how many executives Walmart, the once elusive mass marketer that formerly eschewed such events, has chosen to send to the West Coast. Is the number 25? 30? 50? Guess again.
Asked another way, if Walmart were staging a private event in Bentonville, is there any serious U.S. supplier, distributor or monitor of merchandise who would not immediately book a flight to northwest Arkansas? The question requires no answer.
Thus, as summer begins, the editors of MMR have this carefully considered advice: Delay or defer that planned summer vacation to Hawaii, Mexico or Europe. There’s business waiting to be done in a more attractive venue: San Diego, California.
