{"id":29,"date":"2008-10-27T16:49:53","date_gmt":"2008-10-27T16:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asicanada-asicentral.com\/FredLeslie\/2008\/10\/27\/five-cities-in-five-days-2\/"},"modified":"2008-10-27T16:51:52","modified_gmt":"2008-10-27T16:51:52","slug":"five-cities-in-five-days-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asicanada-asicentral.com\/FredLeslie\/2008\/10\/27\/five-cities-in-five-days-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Cities in Five Days"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first ever fall ASI Road Show was a huge success, not only was attendance strong in all five locations everyone I spoke to loves the format. The regional table top style show allows for greater interaction between the suppliers and distributors, by limiting the number of suppliers on tour to 50 it allows distributors more time to learn about new product ideas and discuss projects they are working on. <\/font>By spreading the show out to major centers it provides distributors with more effective use of their time and cuts down on driving time. <\/font><\/p>\n

The fall tour made stops in Montreal, Ottawa, Concord, Waterloo & Burlington and distributors loved the convenience of having a local show to attend.<\/font>Nick DiNicola, (Advantages Roadshow General Manager), joined us in Montreal and Ottawa and it\u2019s a good thing he did. While I was given a floor plan to follow for the supplier set up I was having a tough time figuring it out.\u00a0 Nick came to my rescue and had the room set up in no time. I guess doing 16 weeks of this in the U.S. makes you a bit of an expert!<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

At this point I need to tell you that I wasn\u2019t overly happy to be setting up the show on the Sunday night in Montreal to begin with. I was parked behind the hotel unloading my truck and I kept seeing people come out to their cars with clear plastic containers. I really wasn\u2019t sure what was going on until I met Nick in the lobby and he told me there was a reptile show going on. <\/font><\/p>\n

I\u2019m just not that big on snakes and yes I was a little nervous that one of them might have gotten loose in the room. Monday was a great day and attendance was steady all day long and no snakes appeared which made it even better!<\/font> <\/font>Monday afternoon we drove to Ottawa which was an easy 2 hour drive (I had to stop at Tim\u2019s for a tea) and once again Nick was there to help guide me thru the set up. But, while we were setting up (no snakes this time) Bill Yelland from Precidio kept sending me emails about snow! I\u2019m scared of snakes but I hate snow and all night I kept thinking, why didn\u2019t I put my snow tires on the week before!<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

The show started a little slower in Ottawa as the rain was pelting down in the morning but by 10 we were busy and the pace kept up right until we closed the show at 1pm. The longest drive for everyone on tour is the Ottawa to Toronto leg and the suppliers had their booths packed up quickly and headed out. I was the last person to leave and was driving later in the day, the first section of the drive it was just rain and I got very lucky. Yes, I was going slightly over the speed limit, a truck pulled out in front of the car ahead of me and there was a car following right behind me when I saw the flashing lights. He pulled over the car behind me and I\u2019ve got to say I can\u2019t believe it, I don\u2019t think at this point we were going over 110!<\/font> <\/font>The rest of the drive was a little slower, one I didn\u2019t want to get a ticket \u2013 touch wood, I think it\u2019s been 20 years now and two the snow started. <\/font>By the time I pulled into Barrie that night there was snow on the ground!<\/font><\/p>\n

Wednesday was a really busy day in Concord; the Venetian Hall was a great location nice large room with really good lighting. The pace never slowed down it was busy right up till we closed the show at 1pm. Thursday we were in Waterloo and had a nice turnout with some people driving in from as far away as Windsor. Then Friday we wrapped up the tour in Burlington with really strong attendance at the show.<\/font> <\/font>It\u2019s a tough week, 5 cities in 5 days but from the responses we received from the suppliers and from the distributors it was a really successful week \u2013 so it was well worth it! Special thanks to Debco who provided the insulated bags for all the attendees at the show and to Marathon who donated the lanyards for us!<\/strong><\/p>\n

One surprise at the show, very few people asked why I had a stuffed wolf on the registration table, either people are used to my weird behaviour and were scared to ask or they were just\u00a0anxious to get into the show and didn\u2019t notice!<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a hint:\u00a0 it has to do with something that is North American, the wolf has a special meaning to me, and for other people it could be a deer, owl, or bear. If you think you know what this is send me an email to: loesen@asicentral.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Thank-you to everyone that participated in the fall road show and contributed to it’s success – I’ll give you more highlights in my blog next week – why not let me know what you think… what product ideas did you see that excited you the most?<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The first ever fall ASI Road Show was a huge success, not only was attendance strong in all five locations everyone I spoke to loves the format. The regional table top style show allows for greater interaction between the suppliers and distributors,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asi-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asicanada-asicentral.com\/FredLeslie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asicanada-asicentral.com\/FredLeslie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asicanada-asicentral.com\/FredLeslie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asicanada-asicentral.com\/FredLeslie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asicanada-asicentral.com\/FredLeslie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asicanada-asicentral.com\/FredLeslie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asicanada-asicentral.com\/FredLeslie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asicanada-asicentral.com\/FredLeslie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asicanada-asicentral.com\/FredLeslie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}