By David Pinto
Trade associations are notoriously slow in making decisions, changing direction or embarking on new roads — even when existing roads have proven to be dead ends.
The reasons are obvious. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Don’t even try.
Against that laissez-faire background, the recent announcement out of Washington, D.C., regarding the proposed changes surrounding the Annual Meeting of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores are stunning, if not game changing. It’s not that the new parameters surrounding the Annual Meeting are, in themselves, especially noteworthy. After all, many critics of the association’s annual April gathering’s agenda have long railed against the Saturday starting date, the two nearly identical business sessions and the unduly long speechifying that have kept many attendees at the pool and environs rather than in the meeting hall.
Now, however, in a somewhat overdue reworking of the meeting’s logistics, the event will begin on Sunday (rather than Saturday), consist of one (not two) business sessions, and reduce the number and length of speeches to (almost) manageable numbers and lengths.
This longtime Annual Meeting attendee aims to be among the first NACDS members to applaud these changes. For far too long, too many NACDS members have complained about the Friday arrival date, the Saturday start to the meeting, the overlong business agenda and the excessive speech-making that have combined to transform an otherwise necessary and laudable gathering into a question of will I or won’t I bother to attend.
Confusing the go-no-go decision still further has been the somewhat obvious question about, if the association has identified a problem, why not just fix it?
That’s just what NACDS has done. Or, put another way, The association has streamlined an already critical event and, in the bargain, removed one objection to attendance that too many members, both retailer and associate, have voiced too loudly for far too long.
So let’s give credit where it’s due and praise the all-too-frequently maligned National Association of Chain Drug Stores for tasking a necessary, though not critical, step toward simonizing an already key annual event still further, while removing a barrier, whether real or arbitrary, toward attendance.
Therefore, we wish to be the first to congratulate the NACDS board of directors, hugely efficient staff and those special people within the organization who have lobbied, long and loudly, for these changes.
Your hopes and fondest wishes have been granted.
