This time last year Grass Roots attended the International Consumer Electronics Show 2009 in Las Vegas. As acknowledged leaders in developing and managing incentive programs for the channel, particularly in the tech and telecoms space, attending CES is a good opportunity for the Grass Roots team to meet up with clients and network with the industry for new opportunities.
In fact, from the CES newspaper which is published daily during the show, we identified that Grass Roots works with 29 of the Top 50 electronics brands at CES 2009. I’m on my way to 2010 CES 2010 now and it will be interesting to see how we do this year.
In 2009, CES contained the normal hype of new launches and industry announcements together with exhausting rounds of “after show” parties hosted by the big brands. There were a few black clouds in the normally clear Nevada skies because as we now know, we were at the depths of the worst recession most of us have seen in our living memories.
It was the most frightening time I’ve experienced in my career having travelled through at least two previous downturns – in the final quarter of 2009, clients literally cancelled programs at a moments notice, put them on indefinite hold or commenced major supplier reviews and supplier rationalisation processes. They were black days indeed and I must admit I did not shed a tear at the turn of the year. It was good riddance to 2009!
That said, what does 2010 hold for us all? The BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) economies with the exception of Russia seem to be recovering strongly if they went into recession at all. The US economy seems to be staggering into recovery but the huge levels of national debt are worrying pundits. The Eurozone seems to be recovering although Greece and Ireland face serious financial challenges and there are worrying noises about the state of public finances in the UK.
In our line of business I’ve always had the advantage of being able to talk to senior people in business that are at the coal face of industry. I’ve found that you can get a good view of how things are doing “from the horse’s mouth” if you ask the right questions.
In that polite banter we all undertake in business, I always try and ask the question: “How’s business?” People are always happy to talk about their own businesses and the answers are always insightful. Here are two contradicting examples which might indicate what we are in for in 2010:
In December I was travelling on a flight from the US to the UK and was sat next to a gentleman who was a senior manager at one of the world’s biggest container port operators. You couldn’t get a better indicator of global trade than container traffic movements so I posed the “How’s business?” question. His answer was startling.
His view was that at the depths of the recession in October and November 2009, container traffic volumes had “fallen off a cliff” declining some 30% to 40%. Since then, things had plateaued but now, in December 2009, volumes were falling dramatically again. “So we are in for the double dip recession then?” I responded. His response was even more alarming. His view was that we were on a “department store” shaped recession – you go down one floor on the elevator and walk around at bit at that level, travel down to the next floor and walk around a bit, then down again and so on to the ground floor! I relayed the gloomy story to my Board colleagues back in the UK.
A couple of weeks later I was at a conference in New York. I got chatting to a Senior VP at a global package and freight shipper we will all have almost certainly used at some point. Another great barometer of business activity, I thought and promptly asked her the “How’s business?” question. Her story paralleled the container story at first – volumes had fallen off a cliff in late 2009 and then plateaued. Now however, volumes were recovering strongly and investment plans that had been put on hold were coming back on stream.
Apart from the obvious conclusion about the world economy being an unpredictable beast, where does this story leave us? I’m not sure but I will keep asking the question of the people I meet at CES 2010.
Tags: http://www.cesweb.org/
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