Specialty Store Buying Groups Hope to Collaborate
Jane Kitchen -- Gifts and Dec, 1/10/2012 2:19:59 PM
San Antonio - Juvenile specialty store buying groups NINFRA, Baby Furniture Plus Association, Baby News, and USA Baby, along with representatives from unaffiliated independent stores, will meet next month in San Antonio to discuss possibilities for coming together to collaborate on programming and speak with a more unified voice in the wake of increased competition from both mass market outlets and the Internet.
Industry veteran and mergers and acquisitions attorney Kelly Mariotti will help oversee and facilitate the meeting, which will be hosted at ABC headquarters here, and ABC President Larry Schur along with ABC Chairman Jeff Seymour will also be present.
Two representatives from each of the buying groups' boards, along with two independent representatives, Mike Schaul of Lone Star Baby & Kids and Mark Simon of Simon's Baby Furniture, will be in attendance.
Mariotti, who is facilitating the process to unify the Juvenile Products Manufacturers' Assn. and the ABC Show which began last fall, said the idea of specialty store unification started from within more than a year ago, but came up again in the context of those broader industry discussions.
"The task group working on industry unification is taking a broad strategic look at identifying industry needs for now and for the future," said Mariotti. "Manufacturers and retailers agree that all industry stakeholders should be working together toward common goals. One area of attention they've noted is the need to support and encourage growth among the specialty class of trade."
Goals of a unified specialty store front include speaking with one voice on regulatory matters, creating programs to help all specialty stores better compete, communicating with one voice to both the industry and the public, and creating membership programs to encourage more specialty stores to get involved.
"The specialists have started the process of figuring out how they can better work together and help each other," said Mariotti. "The industry unification committee wants to support the process and help identify how the larger industry can best assist. Step one is for the specialty stores as a whole to identify their shared goals and beliefs."
This is the purpose of the February 9th meeting, but opinions vary as to what the answers to those questions are. While some feel that a unified specialty store group is needed, others feel strongly that the integrity of the existing groups needs to be maintained.
ABC, which has always included the support of independent specialty stores as part of its mission, has agreed to host the meeting.
"This type of dialogue among specialty stores is really valuable and ABC is happy to pave the way for an initial meeting," said Seymour. "I'm confident they, and we, will learn a lot."
Mariotti endorses the choice of location.
"One of the objectives of the unification discussions is transparency, and both my involvement, and having the meeting at ABC's headquarters, are testaments to the openness of the dialogue," she said.
Mariotti said she "knows the meeting will be a success" and is hopeful that it becomes the foundation for greater dialogue among specialty stores and other industry participants.
The groups aren't waiting for the meeting to get moving on collaboration, however:
The National Independent Nursery Furniture Retailers Assn. and USA Baby buying groups have already formed an alliance to work together, sharing existing programs and creating new programs moving forward.
In a letter to its members, NINFRA executive director Rafael de Castro said that the alliance is a "major step towards the growth, profitability, support, and prestige of NINFRA in the juvenile industry."
"It's an alliance between two groups that are going to keep their separate identities," said de Castro. "...We found a lot of common threads and decided we'd be interested in pursuing this alliance...We're hoping with our combined volume, we can help our membership in developing programs."
With approximately 86 NINFRA member stores and more than 20 USA Baby member stores, the alliance puts the group at more than 100 stores nationwide.
De Castro also said in the membership letter that the alliance will enhance vendor discount programs and give members the ability to negotiate exclusives and private label programs with key vendors.
While USA Baby and NINFRA have some stores in competing markets, de Castro said the real competition is coming from big box retailers and the internet.
The deal is effective immediately, and USA Baby President Alan Levine, along with another representative from USA Baby, will attend NINFRA's Business Building Conference in Carlsbad, California in February.
"It's a day-by-day thing, and we hope it's going to be successful," said de Castro.
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