Designers at office furniture dealerships are on the front line of a large part of the day-to-day business of the industry. They are the ones who take ideas sketched on napkins or dreamed up by customers and actually turn the concepts into high-performance offices.
Yet they don’t get face-to-face time nearly enough with the brand partners they specify. When they do — often at large events like NeoCon — the conversations can be short and shallow.
That is what makes the annual INDEAL Champion Conference unique in the industry. It brings together a select group of dealer designers and high-level executives and representatives from top industry manufacturers, called brand partners on the INDEAL platform, to an event that adds depth to their conversations and creates connections through a fun and relaxed atmosphere.
“The Champion Conference is a great time to pull the industry out of the environments we get stuck in while we are battling things day in and day out so we can engage on a deeper level, learn and work out any issues we might have face-to-face,” said Dave Bloch, co-founder of INDEAL.
The broader design world might not know much about INDEAL, but it should take note. INDEAL started out as a purchasing organization for dealerships, but has morphed in recent years to become a total dealer platform that helps with everything from human resources and wellness to design and product specification.
There are two sides of the equation that makes INDEAL successful for dealers and manufacturers. For dealers, membership in INDEAL means deeper discounts and added rebates, lower operating costs, a more focused approach to non-aligned purchasing and a well-developed network of peers from all major alignments that offer support and a lively idea exchange. For brands, INDEAL creates a pipeline to the top 350 office furniture dealers in more than 750 locations across North America.
Though INDEAL fosters communication between the two camps throughout the year, the Champion Conference is where the two sides annually connect in person. The INDEAL Champion Conference was held last week in New Orleans and its headline sponsor was Global.
Exchanging ideas is key to INDEAL’s success. That’s where the Champion program comes in. After dealerships participate in the platform for a bit, most find it is helping them become more profitable and with a little more focus, the platform can make a significant difference. So they appoint a Champion to help learn all they can to best utilize the program and bring that knowledge back to the dealership.
The INDEAL Champion Conference is where a lot of that learning is distilled and shared. It is a two-way street. Champions tell INDEAL how it can better support them and INDEAL helps the Champions take advantage of all the platform has to offer. At the same time, Champions connect with INDEAL’s Brand Partners — the manufacturers — for deep, one-on-one conversations throughout the course of the four-day event.
The conference is no boondoggle. Champions work hard and spend long hours learning. A key element of the event is a series of mix-and-meet sessions between dealer-design attendees and the brand partners. At the end of each day, attendees are rewarded with fun team building events where they connect with colleagues from other dealerships from around the country.
Hal Breier, an account executive at OpenSquare in Seattle, who was attending his second Champion Conference, said one of the best aspects of the event is that it gives you a time out to reflect on issues important to the industry.
“I enjoyed meeting the brand partners, but I also liked the talk on the soft issues — the people issues — the critical things that make the railroad go and provide an understanding about how we are all in the same boat. I thought it was just me. I thought we were just having these problems at my dealership. That’s not the case. We’re all dealing with major change going on and I think the communication this venue provides is essential.”
For brand partners, the Champion Conference allows them to connect with 50 professionals working in dealer design where they can explain the latest offerings and create closer connections to those who actually specify their products, hopefully leading to more sales.
“I really enjoyed being here because of everybody’s curiosity and willingness to learn and grow,” said Grant Ponte, national dealer business manager at Fellowes Brands. “I bring this inspiration back to our team and our reps to motivate them as well. I enjoy the energy of this conference.”
The conference also gives INDEAL the chance to show off what it is doing to help connect the industry. The platform showed off its new Pinpoint tool that helps designers with seamless product specification and discovery.
Stephanie Stacy, senior workplace designer at LOTH in Cincinnati, said it was her second Champion Conference and she hopes to attend more. “I connected with brands that I wasn’t familiar with and I got excited about the panel discussions and the things I can take to my dealership that we can use to engage with our customers and build culture,” she said.