Summer wholesaler meetings: a place to learn

I wish all publishers and editors were required to attend at least one of the wholesaler-sponsored summer meetings every year. These are regional meetings every year. These are regional meetings spotted all across the county--from South Padre Island, Texas (for Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and New Mexico wholesalers), to Arkansas and New Mexico wholesalers), to Hershey, Pennsylvania (for Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey sholesalers).

Several features of these meetings distinguish them from the major national conventions:

1) They are smaller, more intimate meetings, allowing more person-to-person dialogue.

2) There are more national distributor and wholesaler operations people at these meetings.

3) The topics discussed at these meetings are usually more pragmatic.

I have been attending these meetings for many years; in fact, at this writing, I am just returned from the Hershey, Pennsylvania, meeting. I was asked to attend by the wholesalers to participate in a panel discussion on Allocations and Withholding, a subject on which I have commented in FOLIO many times (see FOLIO, July 1984, page 121). On the panel with me were Dick Brown, vice president/director of news-stand sales, Curtis Circulation Company; Buzz Kantor of Penny Press, a publisher; and wholesalers Stan Budner of Wilmington, Delaware, and Hugh Olbrich of Norristown, Pennsylvania, both past presidents of ACIDA, one of the major wholesaler trade associations. Now that is a pretty high powered group for a meeting with a total attendance of around 200 people.

The opening remarks by each panelist were provocative, the questions challenging, and, surprisingly, we had more questions than time to address them on the convention program. (But one of the nice parts of these meetings is the time to continue discussions after meetings, and the discussions on this topic continued.)

The great debate on withholding centers on how publishers and their national distributors and their national distributors can gain access, through wholesaler personnel, to the sale and return records by retailer on their titles. I believe that I stated the general concensus of publishers and national distributors when I said: "Magazine wholesalers can expect no appreciable improvement in allotment control on their secondary and tertiary titles until they develop, staff and implement a manual procedure to review and revise retailer allotments, when and it publishers or national distributors do reduce allotments."

In other words, publishers will not reduce wholesaler allotments until wholesalers are ready with people, not computers, capable of making reasoned and informed decisions to protect the publisher's net sale with fewer copies allocated.

To give you a sense of the scope of these summer meetings, I will list the other topics of presentation:

CPDA Wholesaler Workshop--Improving Productivity Through Communication: In which an expert in corporate communications applied the concepts of clear communications to wholesaler relations with retailers and publishers.

Allen Ertel (candidate for Attorney General in Pennsylvania) on obscenity: In which Ertel discussed the current state of legislation in Pennsylvania, which gives publishers a closer feeling for the local difficulties and challenges.

I.P.D.A.--Quentin Harvel--A Telecommunication Project to Affect Wholesalers: In which was discussed the beginnings of computer-to-computer telecommunications projects that in time will improve the timeliness of information flow from wholesalers to publishers.

Panel: Allocations and Withholding--Dick Browne, Stan Budner, Buzz Kanter, Hugh Olbrich, Ron Scott.

INESCO--An Innovative Idea by Penthouse--Mike DePew and Irwin Billman: In which publishers in attendance were told the current state of incentive programs.

Brand Name Contemporary Romance, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow--Al Lieberman (Silhouette), Nolan Bennett (Pocket Books).

Motivational Speaker--Charles Paul Conn, Ph.D.--author of The Possible Dream and the Winner's Circle.

CPDA Report--John Harrington and George Klein, Marketing in the 80s--Jack Fitzmaurice (Periodicals Institute).

PBBA--Gerald Rothberg--ID Wholesalers, the Key to Single-Copy Sales.

Panel: Combating Direct Sales--Tom Beauchat (Giant Foods, Dir. Gen. Mdse.), Dave Goeckel (Buffalo, N.Y.), Bill Hall (Select, executive VP), Kent Rolleson (Waldenbooks, Mdse. Mgr.), Ron Sklon (Warner, VP Field Ops.), Mel Trosch (Baltimore MD): In which people from every sector gave opinions. They said it's not going to be a major thing. It's only going to happen when things go wrong. They will be intermittent and not very significant.

Carleton Rosenberg (Philadelphia Inquirer)--Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie/Hello, Is It Me You're Looking For?

Panel: Oppontunities in Fantasy and Science Fiction. Introduction by Stan Budner. Susan Allison (Berkley Bks.), Tony Controvich (Norristown, Pa.), Derrick Davis (Harrisburg, Pa.), Tim DeYoung (Ballantine Bks.), Tom doherty (Tor Bks.), George Schneider (Berkley Bks.).

New Controls for Wholesaler Owned Retail Stores--developed by Joseph Elad. Meeting the challenge

It seems to me that anyone in consumer publishing would benefit from listening to and talking with the people who made the above presentations.

What we must realize is that these are marketing challenges, not math problems with definitive answers. All we will ever do with them is improve. The more participation we have in these discussions, the more likely we are to improve.

So make plans now for next summer and participate in one of the wholesaler summer meetings. You will profit from it.

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