By David Pinto
This year’s National Association of Chain Drug Stores Annual Meeting is already rapidly fading from memory — and attendees and observers are even now drawing their inevitable conclusions. Not surprisingly, opinions vary widely. Those attendees whose companies profited from their attendance and involvement are lauding the annual event with adjectives ranging from “important” to “essential.” Those who found the session largely a waste of time, money and effort are already criticizing the event, claiming that the Annual Meeting is not what it once was — and never will be again.
This postmortem, which has been a regular feature of post-meeting analysis since the dawn of the 21st century, is as inevitable as the meeting itself. And, inevitably, it begs the questions: How valuable is the NACDS Annual Meeting, and how essential is it to the future of mass retailing in America and globally?
Against that background, here is yet another attempt to provide some answers.
On the positive side, the Annual Meeting and the organization that organizes and hosts it are essential ingredients to mass market retailing today, as they have been for longer than even veteran attendees care to remember. It is a rite of spring, the end of the long hibernation that winter annually brings to the mass retailing community. It marks the initial coming together of retailers and suppliers, which is, not coincidentally, what is, or should be, NACDS’ primary mission.
So it was last month, when attendees rushed to catch up with the latest developments behind the news and reassure themselves that mass retailing in America, despite its occasional bumps, remains alive and well.
As long as the meeting planners and attendees remain focused on this primary mission, the NACDS Annual Meeting will remain essential to the growth, development and continued prosperity of mass retailing in America and elsewhere.
That basic truth does not mean, however, that the meeting is, in its current iteration, perfect. No event, or the organization behind it, can honestly claim that distinction.
That said, here are several suggestions for tweaking NACDS on the eve of a new generation of leadership. For those few who need enlightenment, the association’s presidential post is being passed, inevitably, to a new leader, with the NACDS chairmanship rotated annually.
Here, then, are several suggestions, coming from an individual who has attended this indispensable meeting for over 40 years.
First, the time is long passed when the name of the association should be reviewed and reevaluated. Simply put, NACDS is no longer an exclusively chain drug store organization.
Second, that late-summer event, familiarly known as the Total Store Expo, needs to be reevaluated. Time and change have combined to render that meeting largely superfluous, especially given its excessive attention to pharmacy. Front-of-store merchandise categories remain vital to the future health of mass retailing in America. NACDS must bow to the inevitable.
Third, mass retailing has changed in the past 20 years. NACDS must keep up with those changes — or risk becoming yesterday’s news.
Finally, leave the Annual Meeting alone. It’s simply too valuable to change or delete. However a bit of tinkering wouldn’t be out of order.
