Top brands to address member concerns at special merchandising session
By Alan Wolf, YSN
You got questions? They got answers.
Top appliance executives from Whirlpool, GE, Samsung, LG, Electrolux, and Bosch will take the stage at next month’s Summit 2022 to address BrandSource members’ weightiest questions and concerns.
The exclusive session, hosted by Chad Evans, AVB’s VP of Merchandising, will deliver the marketplace skinny to BrandSource dealers direct from the industry’s top movers and shakers.
According to Evans, the session will be built around members’ responses to two questions posed in a recent survey:
- What are manufacturers doing well?
- What areas need improving?
At the event, slated for Tuesday, March 8, at 9:00 a.m., Evans will be joined on stage individually by the brands’ senior-level execs. During the one-on-one interviews, vendors will have 8 to 10 minutes to address the issues raised by members in the survey responses, and to share their company’s action plans for the year.
The hour-long session will be directly followed by the opening of the Summit Expo floor.
The Summit itself is set for March 6-9 at the brand-new Caesar’s Forum Convention Center in Las Vegas, located minutes away from our host hotel, the newly remodeled Harrah’s. The event, which carries BrandSource’s 2022 theme of “Own It,” will also welcome BrandSource affiliates ProSource (custom integration) and MEGA Group (Canada), along with a wide range of vendor partners including Summit sponsors Beautyrest, Beko, Serta, Tempur Sealy, and the aforementioned GE, Electrolux, LG, Samsung and Whirlpool.
In addition to a full agenda of main-stage presentations — including economic and marketing updates and AVB CEO’s Jim Ristow’s traditional state-of-the-union address — Summit 2022 will feature incisive seminars, regional meetings, leadership meet-and-greets, a Furniture Technology Source track, and a product-packed Expo floor. Guest speakers will include keynoter Galen Emanuele, who promises to “blow the doors off the way you approach and drive culture in your organization,” and New York Times bestselling author Mark Murphy, who will help attendees manage “narcissists, blamers and finger-pointers, drama queens and kings, and negative and overly sensitive people” within their companies.
Also addressing the troops will be vendor partners Ben Liebert, Electrolux’s Senior VP of North American Sales, and Mary Putman, GE Appliances’ VP of Marketing & Brand. Putman will share her take on changing consumer and marketing trends during an afternoon Masterclass, while Liebert will address a Young Professionals Lunch & Learn session on navigating the inevitable bumps and curves along the road to business success. (The Young Professionals group of under-40 BrandSource members and vendors will reconvene the following night for a Serta-sponsored networking event at the Icebar, located at The LINQ Promenade.)
In addition, employee engagement and “levity leadership” expert Tami Evans will address the annual Women in Business Breakfast on creating a culture of professional and personal power for women in the workplace, while returning guest speakers will include HRSource managing lead Daniel Abramson, who will conduct a recruiting and hiring bootcamp, and BrandSource service consultant Paul McDonald, who will host a special appliance repair track during the show.
For more information or to register, visit AVBevents.com/Summit.
BrandSource, a unit of YSN publisher AVB Inc., is a nationwide buying group for independent appliance, mattress, furniture, and CE dealers.
