Before I start, don’t forget to read my recap of the Sharp dealer meeting in this week’s edition. It was an excellent show and reaffirmed Sharp’s commitment to the channel despite all the financial troubles its parent company in Japan has been dealing with the past few years.
This year Sharp returned to San Antonio for the second time in the past 10 years. I can’t remember the exact year of that last San Antonio meeting, but I remember the Alamo was right down the street from our hotel. This year we were situated a little further out, confined to our own little world at the JW Marriot resort.
What made this event different from most other events that I attend throughout the year was that this run ran squarely into the weekend. It began on Thursday night and concluded with the awards dinner on Saturday evening. Now, I’ve been to dealer meetings that have started on a Sunday, but this was the first time I recall a dealer meeting where Saturday was one of the key days of the event. From what I’ve been told, the reasoning behind this scheduling was so more dealers could bring their key sales people to the event—sales people who typically can’t be spared to attend a traditional weekday event.
From what I could tell this strategy seemed to work. I ran into a few sales reps who were attending their first dealer meeting even if some of them ended up doing other things on Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening instead of attending breakout sessions, walking the show floor, or enjoying the awards dinner. I’m not naming names, however.
It’s safe to assume there’s a modest concern circulating throughout the press and analyst community, or at least my little community within my home office in Ewing, NJ, that Sharp may be setting a precedent by scheduling a dealer meeting that extends into the weekend. It turned out to be a long working weekend for me, especially when one considers the amount of time it took to get back home on Sunday. From the time the shuttle left the hotel at 6:30 a.m. on Sunday morning to take me to the airport to the time I returned home to Ewing after landing in Philly at 6:30, it was one of the longest days of the year. Damn, why aren’t there more direct flights to and from San Antonio?
If other OEMs follow Sharp’s lead (and hopefully none of the other OEMs are reading this), this could be the end of the weekend as we know it for the press and analyst community. It’s one thing to give up a single weekend out of the year for a dealer meeting, but considering the number of events press and analysts typically attend throughout the course of the year, if everybody else does it, we are royally you know what’d.
That said, I had a tremendous time in San Antonio, I learned a lot, and listening to Sharp’s executives and its dealers, restored whatever faith I may have lost over the barrage of negative financial publicity I’d been subjected to during the past few years. Still, I wouldn’t be too disappointed if the next time Sharp schedules a dealer meeting, a weekend is not part of the equation.
Thanks for reading.
