COPA Awards Gala

Announcing the 2014 COPA Awards winners

 

The Motown-themed 2014 COPA Stars Gala was another memorable and entertaining evening for our industry. Nearly 160 industry luminaries gathered on Thursday, November 27 at the Bellagio in Vaughan, Ontario to honour excellence and raise proceeds for the COPA Scholarship Fund and "Movember".

Guests started their evening off at the open bar mingling over drinks and hors d’oeuvres, as the silent auction table buzzed with stiff competition for two iPad minis and the 49" LG flat screen. The grand prize basket, courtesy of 3M Canada Company, which consisted of $500 worth of gift certificates ($150 at LCBO, $150 at Canadian Tire, $150 at The Keg, and $50 at Cineplex) was also hotly contended for. Overall, the silent auction, grand prize draw, winter accessories/jewellery table and candy bar, raised approximately $5,500 in proceeds.

Emceed by COPA’s own chair, Elio Tremonti at Staples Canada, and president, Sam Moncada, the night seemed to fly by once guests were seated for dinner and the awards show.
By far, the most touching moment of the night came during the Individual Award of Excellence presentation to Gary Quinnell, formerly of Staples Canada. Mr. Quinnell was overcome with emotion as Pete Gibel, his former boss at Staples Canada, talked of his great personal and professional contributions to the organization and OP industry. Mr. Gibel’s introduction was followed by a video tribute, created by the Staples Canada team, featuring testimonials from co-workers and colleagues, including vendors that worked with Mr. Quinnell, as well as his wife and children. Welcomed to the podium with a standing ovation, Mr. Quinnell gave an emotional acceptance speech and returned to his seat with another standing ovation. All in all, it is clear that Mr. Quinnell left a great personal and professional legacy across the industry and is a well-deserving candidate for COPA’s highest individual honour in 2014.


COPA handed out nine awards at this year’s Gala with ACCO Brands sweeping several categories thanks to their Hilroy and Kensington brands. Nevertheless, the Awards Committee had some close calls to make this year as the contention was very close in many of the categories. The 2014 COPA Awards winners are:

Category Development

  

3M Canada Company - Scotch® Expressions

 

 

Honourable mention in this category:

 

Fellowes Canada Inc. - Auto Feed Shredders - AutoMax™

 

Corporate Social Responsibility Leadership – Program

 

Beatties Basics Office Products - Environmental Responsibility
 

Staples Canada - Staples Canada Recycle for Education Computer Lab Contest

 

 

 

 

Corporate Social Responsibility Leadership – Product

ACCO Brands Canada - Me to We Back-to-School Collection in conjunction with Staples and Free the Children

Thinking about Expanding your assortment.......how about Booze?

I came across an article a few weeks back regarding a New Zealand OP dealer's efforts to expand their product offering and found it very amusing. There has been lots of talk about dealers in our business expanding into non-traditional areas.......maybe they should consider this?

From the New Zealand Herald

An office supplies company's request to deliver beer and spirits to customers has been rejected.

Auckland's "Gem Office Products Depot" wanted to deliver alcohol alongside fruit juice, stationery and cleaning supplies to office workers.

Under the Sale of Liquor Act, local licensing authorities can grant off-licences if they think alcohol sales are an "appropriate complement" to other goods a business sells.

Neither police nor the Medical Officer of Health opposed Gem's application, but Auckland's district licensing inspector Stephen Galvin claimed booze was not an appropriate complement to other goods Gem sold, which were overwhelmingly office supplies.

Gem disagreed, saying it was developing its business into a "one-stop shop" for customers.

Gem said it was reasonable to expect some offices to order drinks, including alcoholic ones, when ordering stationery and office supplies.

Judge John Hole disagreed with the company.

"In this case, the sale of alcohol has nothing to do with the kind of goods sold by the applicant. Non-alcoholic drinks constitute a very small part of the overall business of the applicant."

Judge Hole also pointed out other firms had made similar bids, and failed.

One earlier case involved an application from an Ashburton company Combined Rural Traders Society, which wanted to sell beer, wine and spirits from its site as well as a range of rural merchandise. The High Court turned that request down.

Hey, what with the dealer community trying to expand their assortments from A to Z as a total solution for everything - maybe we here in Canada should try this? Think the beer companies need an agent to put this together?

Beyond Motivation Is Decision

The importance of  Consistent Motivation.

 Article #5 –  Solutions for the Human Side of Business - By: Jonathan Creaghan  

 I had a wonderful conversation with a friend about why some people achieve their goals and others don’t. He had been sharing his experience of feeling excited about working out and losing weight. For the first month his determination was high, and then it waned after he injured himself during a workout session. His commitment to his goal fizzled out. Frustrated with himself, he couldn’t get back to his original regime and enthusiasm.

 

 We have all been there — we start something with vigour and passion, only to find our excitement and energy naturally dissipates after a while. The problem is that we interpret this waning as a loss of interest, making it difficult to overcome the natural ups and downs we are inevitably going to face.  

I can imagine your heads nodding as I write this. The issue is not the loss of enthusiasm, the issue is where you have placed your attention and energy. Typically, we place a great deal of emphasis on the initial excitement and passion we feel for our cause, and rely on that unbridled energy to move us forward. This energy, which is difficult to sustain because of its naive nature, can disappear very quickly at the first set back.

 

 

The same pattern can be seen in companies wanting to improve: great beginning, but short-lived follow through.  If we feel enthusiastic, we move forward. If we feel we’ve lost that energy, we panic and question our decision — or worse, beat ourselves up for losing it. An enormous amount of time is spent wondering why we are not excited any more. Our mistake is relying on a passion that isn’t deep enough to handle varying external conditions or fragile internal emotions. Shift your focus away from whether you are excited, and you will see that this lost energy can be directed to a re-commitment to the original purpose.

 

“Goal is to be efficient and economical with your actions”

 

Contrary to what you hear from most motivational speakers, you don’t need to get up every morning feeling passionate about your life. Nor is it necessary to be excited about your goal every moment. You don’t need to artificially build yourself up. The energy it takes to do so is energy better spent on just achieving what you want. The goal is to be efficient and economical with your actions right now. When you do this, you can then maintain the higher levels of energy and focus over a longer period of time, and ultimately achieve your goal faster.  

It is never about the level of sustained enthusiasm, it’s about the efficient use of energy and focus over time at an appropriate level to create quality outcomes. And believe it or not, this is easily attainable. You just decide to do it.

 

 

 

Excerpt from Jonathan’s upcoming book

 Beyond: Finding Freedom and Meaning in the Everyday

 

Web Marketing – Opportunity or Oxymoron

By: Norm MacLeod

If there was a movie about Web marketing it would probably be called A Shot In the Dark and the same words Inspector Clouseau used to sum up the original movie, “I believe everything, I believe nothing,” would also aptly apply.

 In the Office Products world, web marketing used to mean a number of boxed ads for randomly selected products spread around the landing page. These ads were funded by vendors usually out of the same pot that pays for flyers and catalogues. And was there a return on this investment?

You can choose either:

A) YES - 102,816 impressions over the month the ad appeared

B) NO - 14 clicks and possibly 3 sales actually attributable to the ad.  

 
Of course web marketing has evolved since then. Now we have stalker ads and search based personalized ads that are at least somewhat relevant to the customer. What’s that you say, you don’t really care that a Staples ad appears on Kijiji after you’ve been to their site and didn’t find either the item or price you were looking for? Rather than copying current fashionable ways of spending web dollars, perhaps our industry needs to concentrate more on finding marketing tools that genuinely benefit our particular breed of web customer.

For better or worse, our industry’s products really aren’t that emotionally important to our customers and ads for them will never be of much interest to anyone other than someone with that exact burning need the moment the ad is seen. So does that mean web marketing is a waste of money?

Based on the fact that the telemarketing industry still exists by trying to sell duct cleaning to everyone in the world with a land based phone, the shotgun approach must deliver some small percentage of success. But is there a way to turn web marketing funds into a higher percentage form of campaign, preferably one that is not annoying or intrusive to the customer? I believe the answer is a resounding YES.

The most effective use of Web marketing funds is to help the customer find what they are looking for even if they aren’t quite sure what that exactly is. Why is this the most effective spend? Because the decision about what to buy has not been made yet. People searching specifically, knowing what they want or shopping from a contract/favourites list, can’t be easily influenced. The decision making is already done. 

Imagine yourself as a customer shopping for an item. You know roughly what you want, be it a pen or a USB drive or a binder but you aren’t sure about brand or feature set. You enter the general item name into the search field and a scroll down of choices appears. At this point, it can either be eenie-meenie pick one at random or if some web marketing dollars have been allocated, specific products can be made more appealing.

For example, one of the items in the list could have a 30% off sale sign, or a $10 off coupon or a banner saying Customer Top Choice or ECO Choice. Another very simple and cheap approach is to make the item photo of the most profitable product more attractive than the ones around it, either bigger or with a more colourful background. A useful attention getter is a click for video demo icon or detailed fact sheet. The key at this point is to help the customer make a buying decision (even if it is on a paid for basis). At the very least, the search sequence should be based on some internal rationale, whether that is coop funding driven or dealer profitability driven.

So how do the big 3 industry web sites stack up? Totally at random, I selected the category of Retractable gel pens for a search, and here’s what I found on October 16^th, 11:30AM:

None of the sites attempted any direct marketing once the scroll down appeared, one site actually had no discernible sequence logic at all and included products that weren’t even in the selected category (a refill is NOT a pen). The other 2 sites had returns that were likely based on sales ranking as well as a directive to place private brand high in the list.

You would think that at least a boxed ad could appear relevant to the product group selected since all 3 of these sites run timed promotions which would usually have some product on sale in the selected category. It’s already on sale, how about letting the web customer know it up front rather than having to specifically sort by On Sale. How many vendors have tried to influence the sequence of the product scroll down, realizing that most customers aren’t going to get past about #10? How many vendors have demanded that when they coop for a promotion, the save amount be highlighted on the web search? How many vendors have proposed an aggressive cross sell campaign to dealers funding a switch over special offer if their product is not the first selected? How many vendors pay to ensure their collateral materials are used properly on the web site?

All of these web marketing tactics are well within the capabilities of the industry web sites. Dealers need to allocate more resources to their web activities, moving away from things like catalogues and flyers, to make them happen and if the dealers aren’t going to do it on their own, the vendors need to drive the process and ensure their marketing dollars are spent effectively. Otherwise, start buying shares in Amazon.

 

How can I sell the Canadian Government?

It was a packed house that attended the latest COPA breakfast seminar "the Government of Canada Procurement Strategy". Representatives from the Federal Government led an informative seminar on the ins & outs on how to sell products to the Canadian government. If you missed it, here is a synopsis of the discussion. 


Attendees await the start of the COPA seminar on
 "How to sell the Government of Canada" at the
Toronto Airport West hotel in Mississauga. 

Canadian Government representatives, Manny Argiropoulos, Guy Ranger and Paul Dorion presented the audience with a presentation that both informed and enlightened the crowd on how to get started on the path of gaining government business. Their advice? First and foremost - get your company registered as a viable supplier to the government of Canada at https://buyandsell.gc.ca/. That is the first step in unravelling the potential of a customer that represents over $50 million dollars in annual office related purchases and transmits over 300,000 annual transactions. That is a lot of pens, file folders and office chairs. The potential of this account is staggering and every business should be exploring how their offerings can be of interest to the government. 


Manny Argiropoulos from OSME tells
 the assembled COPA audience how to do business
 with the Government of Canada

The good news is that you don't have to be a large multi-national player in order to meet the criteria to sell products to the various federal government institutions, nor do you have to be the winner of the "Standing Offer" in order to still be able to earn some federal government business.


Mr. Argiropoulos, from the Ontario Region "Office of Small and Medium Enterprises” (OSME), first led the discussion on how to get started with the government. As in everything, the best place to start is at the beginning, and for government of Canada procurement, the beginning means going to the buyandsell.gc.ca website, which is the authoritative source for federal procurement including the new Government Electronic Tendering Service buyandsell.gc.ca/tenders  that replaced the old "Merx" government tendering site. Within buyandsell.gc.ca, in plain language, you will be able to get your business registered as a potential government supplier and you will have access to potential business opportunities for your firm. This website is the source on how to sell to the Government of Canada – one of the largest buyers of goods and services in Canada. Once you are registered, your company will be given a PBN - "Procurement Business Number", which means you are registered and can become a potential supplier for low dollar procurements with Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC), the Government of Canada’s main procurement group. You will use this number regarding all bids, tenders and invoices on any transactions involving PWGSC opportunities. Having a PBN can get you started - so go to the website and get your business registered. Having a PBN makes you known to government buyers.

Everything you need to know is available at https://buyandsell.gc.ca/ including all federal tenders that might be available to your company. There is a “google –like” search button that can help you navigate or search the site for potential business opportunities that might be of interest to your company.

Paul Dorion, team leader supplies,
discusses how to sell Office Supplies to the
 Federal Government

 Mr. Ranger, team leader furniture and Mr. Dorion, team leader supplies, head up the Public Works buying department teams for Office related products and they led a more specific discussion on how to sell products that are of interest to our industry. Here we learned the difference between "Standing Offer for Office Supplies" and a "Supply Arrangement". The standing offer is an offer that has been awarded to one or more office supply companies for a limited basket of goods that totals 1565 high volume items. It is not a blanket PO for the purchase of all of the items from the winning bids office supply catalogue. So even though you may not be the supplier of record on the standing offer there are still opportunities for companies that are government registered with PBN numbers and have products and services that are in demand but were not on the standing offer.

By having a supply arrangement with the government, your company can still be asked to bid on quotes for products not on the standing offer through a 3 quote competitive process. There are a set of predetermined conditions that must be met in order to qualify for the right to bid on contracts. Government of Canada offices have budgets up to $25,000 to purchase needed items that do not fall on the standing offer. A supply arrangement allows government clients to solicit bids from a pre-qualified pool of suppliers.  There are 110 agencies that are allowed to purchase on their own up to this limit. Accepting purchases through a credit card is a must, so be sure to be set up for this form of transaction. The good news is that all suppliers have an equal chance at this additional business.  


With our speakers (L to R): Manny Argiropoulos,
Paul Dorion and Guy Ranger from Public Works Canada


So the advice, get registered and then make contact with federal government offices in your area and let them know what you have to offer - it might lead to some nice orders and you may gain a long-term customer who should be able to pay their bills.

Editorial: If you didn't attend this seminar you really missed out on an excellent event with great information, that was attended by industry heavyweights. COPA is putting on some great shows that will help you in your business and if you missed this one, you really should consider attending a future seminar - not only for the information that you will pick-up but also for the  "Networking" opportunities that COPA makes available to all. I have always found these events to be a great place to meet and greet with colleagues that I rarely come in contact with or are completely new to me. It surprises me that many don't take advantage of the opportunities that COPA makes possible for all. COPA is here to help you further your business - take advantage of it.

Keep an eye out for the next event and hopefully we will meet up!!

For a transcript of this seminar or other information on COPA, contact COPA at events@copa.ca

October: Office Product Trade Show Season

Well if the leaves are turning colour it must be time for our industries annual trade shows. Those on the Vendor side of the business have attended two over the last two weekends - in both Toronto and Montreal.

Last weekend, the Basics group brought their dealers in from across the country to meet and greet at the Toronto Congress centre. A festive, around the world theme highlighted the annual show which was well attended. It was a busy Friday afternoon and early evening - and this reporter barely had time for a drink of water. It's always a good show if you are busy!!!! (Bad show if you spend your time talking with the other vendors).

Marnie Stone, of Stones Office Plus at the colourful Vision Global Media Booth.

I was there with my 3 vendors, American Tombow, Genuine Supply Source and Vision Global Media. We were super busy meeting with dealers from the Basics, Office Plus and Office Pro dealer groups. On a bright note - Vision was awarded with a Vendor of the Year Award in the category of "Best Service" by a small vendor. So we were really happy about that.  Thanks Basics, CIS and Guild dealers.

 

It's always great to renew old friendships and meet new friends at the annual show. We look forward to attending the show next year which will be held in..........Newfoundland!!!! That should really be something. I have been out to St. John's several times over my career and have always had a lot of fun. The people are very welcoming. I am sure the setting will make for a memorable event.

Sarah Fullerton of Fullerton Sales and Katie Huffman of Tombow,
at the Basics Office Products annual trade show.

The following weekend I ventured east, up the 401, for the annual celebration of the Quebec Office Product Industry - the AQIF show, which was held at Place Bonaventure in Montreal. A large turn-out of Quebec dealers and large enduser office product buyers attended this year's show that culminated with a Friday night masked ball. They always know how to "live life" in Montreal which is why it is always a popular stop on the annual trade show tour.  I never get tired of going to Montreal or working a show there.

I attended the show with Genuine Supply Source. GSS had a busy booth at AQIF as they presented their imaging supply products, including their popular "Fusion" Laser toner cartridges to the attendees. The show was solidly attended by dealers large and small, along with a numerous array of sales people from the larger Office Supply organizations. Plus the AQIF show attracted several large consumers. The GSS booth was busy as we met with many current customers and potential new customers.

John Brohman, Chantal Lussier and Dave MacMillan of Genuine Supply Source

I always look forward to the trade show season, they are great forums for meeting both long-standing customers and potential new accounts. Plus, - so long as you are busy, they are a lot of fun.