ASA President’s Letter

RSS

Maybe the most meaningful but unexpected benefits I’ve found in serving as your ASA president this year is the opportunity to learn about the rich history of our industry and our association.

Whether we are manufacturers, reps, distributors or contractors, our industry has quietly been performing essential work for centuries. How do we double down on bringing the best people to the best companies in the best industry?

The Emerging Leaders EMERGE conference in Savannah opened to record-setting attendance (seems to be a theme at ASA events this year!) and nearly half the attendees were experiencing EMERGE for the first time.

While I’m not the first woman to be president of the American Supply Association, I am the first woman with the honor of attending the ASA Women in Industry ELEVATE conference as the ASA president —being the first woman to hold the role since the founding of the group in 2014.

Advocacy is one of the pillars of the American Supply Association. When the association was founded more than 50 years ago, the need to advocate on behalf of the industry as a whole with a unified voice was paramount and the need remains today.

Last month, the room at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Resort in Naples, Florida, was brimming with more than 100 volunteers representing multibillion-dollar international companies, regional independent companies, and maybe the lifeblood of the industry, multigenerational family businesses.

Every quarter the first thing I do to put together that report is to pull down the most recent ASA Monthly Economic Report and Monthly Sales Report from (both are readily available in the Business Intelligence section of the MyASA members' only portal at www.asa.net).

Nothing gives me better insight to the state of our industry and where the industry is headed.

While much uncertainty in the economy is ahead, we know we’ve been in this position before and we know we can weather any changes ahead. It will be increasingly important to harness the power of not only our industry trade association, but also the power of the organizations across our industry working together collectively, cooperatively and complementary as buying groups, adjacent industry organizations, and regions to support our overall industry strength.

I have been fortunate this past year to have traveled the country as ASA president and was able to speak to many different groups. Each time, I talked about what I call the base case for what ASA delivers to its members, which is impressive on its own.

Knowledge is power. And knowledge is powered by data. Access to real, actionable data is one of the most important tools for any leader in today’s rapidly changing business environment. The ability to analyze, manipulate and act upon real-time information is not only a need but increasingly a requirement for success in business today.