A Tale of Two Worlds

I admit it; I’ve entered a new world and am enjoying it very much. Although, six weeks into my new world, I’ve leveraged relationships and applied skills learned in my old world.

Allow me to back track, earlier in 2011 you may recall that Business Information Group (BIG), a division of Glacier Media purchased several magazines from Rogers Publishing – one of which was Meetings & Incentive Travel and their IncentiveWorks show. In that deal, over 15 magazines were sold; two of them being Hardware Merchandising and Canadian Contractor. In September, a career opportunity presented itself to join BIG and lead the teams on Hardware and Contractor. Frankly, it was the kind of tremendous opportunity you just don’t say no to.

In a nutshell, Hardware Merchandising serves the home improvement retail industry – our readers are owners and decision makers at Rona, Home Hardware, Home Depot etc. Canadian Contractor serves the residential construction industry – our readers are renovation and custom home builders like Mike Holmes and Jim Caruk. This is a brand new world; a stretch from the meetings and incentive travel industry…sort of.

Hardware Merchandising has an awards program…and produces a gala event to present the awards that is co-located with another industry conference. The event was approximately five weeks after my start date and we had no sponsors and no attendees registered. The winners had been selected and thanks to our co-location had a date and a venue.

You’ve heard it time and time again; relationships are the secret key to any successful event. My story is one of many, which proves this theory (again). In just four weeks we had secured seven sponsors; all of them our industry’s national and regional associations from Newfoundland to British Columbia to Nunavut. We had registered 90 attendees, on par with past years attendance. We had produced seven 4 minute high-definition videos and developed the awards gala program including staging, audio visual, signage, menu and timing with the hotel. There were even custom chocolate logos made to enhance the dessert course, florals for décor and the event photographer was ready to roll.

I am very fortunate to have existing, strong relationships with the audio visual provider, the organization that owns the conference, the florist, venue and photographer. Without these relationships the process would not have gone so smoothly and, I dare say, the event would not have been the success it was without their tremendous support.

As many of you know…I’m a self confessed social media junkie. But this tale reinforces that face-to-face relationships will never be replaced with online ones.

Until next time,
Steve

Now known as…
Stephen (Steve) Dempsey, Publisher
Hardware Merchandising | Canadian Contractor
sdempsey@bizinfogroup.ca / P: 416 510 6780