New Millennium, New Direction

The General Merchandise Distributors Council is redefining itself to meet the growing demands of a changing marketplace and a rapidly evolving membership. As the new president/CEO of this 30-year-old association, I have the responsibility of reorganizing and reinventing what has traditionally been the most productive association in the supermarket nonfoods arena.

What will this reinvented GMDC look like?

First of all, many aspects of the success- ful member services programs that have been our core competencies will continue, but will indeed look different. The most obvious example is the changes we have made in our two annual marketing conferences (general merchandise in the fall and health & beauty care in the fall) and our signature Controlled Casual Confer-ence (CCC) one-on-one tabletop meeting format.

Agenda-wise, we're shortening each conference by one-half day. This will cut back on valuable time away from the office for our mem- bers, while insuring that they still receive plenty of time to conduct a complete schedule of CCCs and attend our Educational Foundation-sponsored business and workshop sessions. The productivity of the CCCs themselves will be enhanced with a series of Internet-based programs to prompt huge increases in pre-conference online planning and post-conference follow-up capabilities.

Currently being developed by our newly appointed vice president for information technology, Michael Winterbottom, this technological communication and commitment management system is called CCCnet. Several important components are included in the CCCnet tool kit, but none is more impressive in capabilities than our Collaborative Agenda-Setting tool.

This makes it possible for our members to create an agenda ahead of time, pull up their conference schedules on the GMDC web site, pick key appointments and transmit topics and issues electronically via the GMDC web site to the other party. This collaborative process begins before the conference, continues as follow-up occurs on both sides post-conference and can actually continue as an ongoing dialogue between members completely outside the scope of our marketing conferences.



E-Interaction

The objective of CCCnet is to enhance productivity not only at our marketing conferences, but also throughout the marketplace in the course of everyday business activities, 365 days a year. We feel this a significant step forward for the association and our membership. In a world that is increasingly embracing business to-business e-commerce best practices, we at GMDC feel it is incumbent upon the association community to not only facilitate trade partner dialogue at our industry events but also at a much higher level of electronic interaction. We intend to fine-tune and expand this important new tool.

Along with making changes in our marketing conferences, our board has amended our bylaws to broaden our membership, extending retailer/ wholesaler membership to drug chains, mass merchandisers, drug wholesalers and e-commerce com-panies. While our primary strength will continue to be our expertise in the area of supermarket nonfoods, our new multi-channel approach converts us from a fairly narrowly focused association into one with a broad-based membership united by GM, HBC and pharmacy-oriented product lines. We are extremely excited about this new opportunity.



More Education

Finally, as we enter this new era of leadership, we are placing even greater emphasis in the area of industry education. Our seven-year-old Educational Founda-tion continues to grow in stature and value with the introduction of a steady stream of studies, seminars and statistics that will enhance productivity and open up new mer- chandising and operational oppor- tunities. A commitment to creating programs focused on pharmacy issues; continued leadership in develop- ing expanded whole health programs; and an upcoming Birthday Best Practices program are just a few highlights of new programs slated for the coming year.

GMDC, its boards and staff truly are committed to an exciting new direction in this new millennium. We look forward to working closely with our members and our industry trade association partners to ensure a successful transition to the exciting new marketplace of 2000.

The GMDC Report was prepared by David T. McConnell Jr. The views expressed are not necessarily those of Supermarket Business.