NAHAD gets back in groove with Miami convention

MIAMI—For NAHAD attendees, the group's recent annual convention felt like "business as usual."

That was the takeaway from Molly Alton Mullins, executive vice president of the Association for Hose and Accessories Distribution, who was pleased with how the event went off at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach Hotel.

After having to cancel its 2020 convention and then move last year's event from San Diego, Calif., to Arizona because of the COVID-19 pandemic, NAHAD's annual convention—by far the biggest event on the association's calendar—came off smoothly.

While Mullins' firm, SEVEN12 Management company, has put on 37 in-person events since June 2021, she knows for many, traveling still brings some anxiety.

"It was really a great meeting for everyone," she said. "We had a lot of people who said it felt like a 'normal' NAHAD."

Mullins credits some of that to last year's meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz., which took place with much of the safety protocols still in place, for making this year's event more comfortable for many attendees.

Final attendance came in at 878, at the lower end of NAHAD's average of 850-1,000 attendees, but much closer than last year's gathering.

"What we were really missing was some of our international members," Mullins said. A number of companies from Italy and Germany had been scheduled to come and exhibit, but at the last minute the logistics didn't work out for them. She noted that some of the Canadian members were able to attend this year with travel restrictions being lifted.

Hosting a convention at a venue like South Beach brings some challenges of its own. It's a great location, but there are distractions that can draw people away from the meeting.

"You always try to balance taking people to a place they can enjoy with their guests, but you still want them in the meeting and doing business," Mullins told Rubber News. "We built downtime specifically to give people a chance to not feel guilty about going to the beach or the pool or things like that."

On the business side, she said there were 130 exhibitors for the Showcase of Hose Solutions, always the centerpiece of the final day of each year's NAHAD convention. That was a bit shy of the typical 140-155 exhibiting, but 85 percent said the showcase either "exceeded or highly exceeded expectations."

"That's the metric I care about the most to make sure that interaction is what they expected," Mullins said. "People paid a lot of money to be there. It's the last day of the show, so you want to make sure they're getting value out of that block."

Private meeting rooms for companies to use were sold out, so there was plenty of one-on-one business interaction where manufacturers and their distributors could discuss the challenges each are facing, with distributors able to ask what their vendors are doing to alleviate issues currently facing the business world.

The program of speakers at the Miami meeting also focused on the pain points people are feeling, she said. There was a work force development panel with NAHAD members talking about strategies they are doing to hire and retain workers.

Supply chain issues also were front and center, though Mullins said many of the companies understand that the troubles will remain for some time. "We're all living it. You're getting through it, learning to adjust process and lead times." she said. "How you're communicating with your customers. You will get it (delivered) as fast as you can. You're not hiding it, and there were a lot of conversations about navigating (the difficulties)."

The program ended with Vijay Vaitheeswaran, an executive editor with The Economist, who talked on "The Disrupted Economy: What Lies Ahead for Business?"

NAHAD leaders were a bit nervous about closing the show with him because of the topic and his focus on the China trade relations supply chain, but it worked out well, according to Mullins.

"He was not optimistic because it's not an optimistic time," she said. "He provided a lot of feedback about being leery about entering into new business relations with Chinese companies. Near the end he used the term 'paranoia' within the Chinese government that won't make it any easier to do business in that market."

Vaitheeswaran did weave some positive outlook in the ebb and flow of his talk, noting some points of improvement in certain arenas. "I think he was a good way to kind of close things out and provide that global economic outlook—what's affecting any kind of distribution and trade," Mullins said.

NAHAD, over the next two years, will visit the two venues that weren't able to host the conventions because of the pandemic. The association will meet April 29-May 3, 2023, in the Bahamas, with the 2024 event scheduled for San Diego.