Your time and expertise is stretched six ways to Sunday. Days off are few and far between. Employees, customers and suppliers all rely on you for answers – often, they need them yesterday. The success of your business – and all those who rely on it – rests solely in your hands. And, while you always run lean, now more than ever are you making due with less during this down market.
If you can check one or more of the boxes below, a little help may be on the horizon.
Do you want to:
______ Save time?
______ Reduce travel expenses?
______ Sharpen business skills and learn about new best practices and technologies?
______ Gain greater understanding of industry-wide issues and opportunities?
______ Attend an event with peers, manufacturers and industry experts that strikes the ideal balance of learning, sharing and networking?
The Aftermarket Distribution Summit is a new distributor event that will help you achieve the objectives you checked above, and even those you didn’t. It’s the coming together of three industry institutions – Truck Parts & Service magazine, the Commercial Vehicle Solutions Network and HDeXchange, Inc. – to integrate three meetings into one, and in the process bring greater value to all players in the independent aftermarket channel.
The debut of this new annual event is Sept. 12-16 on Amelia Island, Fla., and it is expected to draw hundreds of attendees from among CVSN and HDX members. While no one in this industry needs another meeting, the Aftermarket Distribution Summit saves everyone time and money by combining the CVSN annual meeting, the HDX Technology Conference and the Truck Parts Seminar into a single venue.
We are taking the best elements of each meeting to create the lineup for the Summit. It will include candid roundtable discussions and forums with a cross-section of participants (distributors, suppliers and end users), sessions with noted speakers and industry experts, technology workshops, private strategic planning sessions, awards and entertaining networking opportunities, including the popular Tenneco Challenge Golf Tournament.
It will be somewhat sad to retire the venerable Truck Parts Seminar, which ran for 33 consecutive years. But the industry is different now than when that event first started. Both time and money seem to be at record premiums. It just makes sense to give distributors and manufacturers the most value possible through the most efficient means possible. I believe the Aftermarket Distribution Summit will do just that.
I hope you add the Aftermarket Distribution Summit to your 2009 calendar as a must-attend event. If you’re not already a CVSN member, this is just one more reason to consider joining. To find out more about CVSN membership, contact Angelo Volpe at (904) 737-2900 or [email protected]. To learn more about HDX and its role in the Summit, contact Edward Kuo at 616-682-9900 or [email protected]. And, if you want to know more about the Summit and Truck Parts & Service magazine’s participation in it, you can, as always, reach me at (847) 636-5073 or [email protected]
