Record Number To Converge in Music City for the 34th MEGA Group Show

Furniture World News Desk on 8/10/2017

MEGA Group recently announced that a record-number of attendees will converge in Nashville for the 34th MEGA Group Show. The theme of the Fall Show is centered around the power of each retailer’s story and how they can craft a story that connects with employees, with customers and with their communities.

On tap for Sunday, August 13th are more than 40 training sessions to help retailers tackle the areas most important to them – merchandising, marketing, business planning, employee engagement, financials and even new product offerings. The day also includes keynotes from two dynamic speakers – Kelly Swanson and Andrew Davis. Swanson, a comedian and storyteller will open the show with a morning keynote that brings home the theme of connecting through story, and she’ll offer two workshops to help retailers craft their own. In the afternoon, Davis will engage and entertain attendees while speaking to what it takes to keep customers in today’s digital world. Davis is the author of Brandscaping: Unleashing the Power of Partnerships, one of Amazon’s top 100 marketing books, and Town INC which hit the shelves in 2015.
Conquering the digital world remains a key focus for the buying group and its members. Beyond the training opportunities on topics like Which Ad Worked Best and An Intro to Digital Marketing, MEGA Marketing will release its own Guide to Navigating Digital Media and offer one-on-one consulting sessions with members during the Show.

“I’m excited to have this time to meet with dealers one-on-one and talk through the challenges they’re facing, what’s working and where their fears are,” said Amanda Evans, MEGA’s director of marketing. “Coming from the agency world, I know how complicated this can all seem, but at the end of the day our goal is to distill what we know so it’s understandable and create strategies that are easily executable at the local level. Digital doesn’t have to be intimidating and we hope this new Guide will help remove some of the mystery and complexity.”

Day one concludes with a member favorite event – MEGA Madness. Forty-five vendors have produced their best deals and closeouts for retailers to snatch up in the one hour buying frenzy. Day two and three center around the Buying Show with more than 90 vendors on-hand to share their latest innovations and special offers with MEGA’s retailers. New to this event are more than 20 first-time exhibitors and new partners.

Other highlights of the event include sessions from Jim O’Donnell from Tempur+Sealy about the Bed-in-the-Box Disrupters; a panel featuring the Retail Giants of Bedding Ryan Baty and Lee Burns, along with Nate Grindle; appliance training sessions from Whirlpool, GE, Frigidaire, Samsung and LG; and sessions to help retailers plan for the future including steps to succession planning.

Rick Bellows, president of MEGA Group sums it up by saying “This year we’ve seen so many changes and upsets in retail, all of which have had a direct effect on the independent channel. But from many of our members we’re hearing that this is one of their best years ever. We’ll use this time together to encourage and challenge our members to look for ways to adapt with the changing landscape and to be aggressive in pursuit of customers. We believe the independent channel is primed for growth; we just have to go after it with intensity.”

For more details on the event, visit www.MEGAGroupShow.com.