March 2005
Best Practices: Buy to win

APRO Buying Show’s cash giveaway nets exhibitors $13.2 million in sales

By Cathy Chatfield-Taylor

Building relationships is well and good, but exhibitors at the Association of Progressive Rental Organizations (APRO, www.aprovision.org) Convention complained that they weren’t writing enough orders. APRO responded with an inventive incentive program that generated nearly 20 percent more sales than the leading industry buying show.

“The incentive for the buyers was the cash. They love winning money,” says Cindy Ferguson, Marketing Director for the Austin, TX-based association, which serves the $5.9 billion-a-year rent-to-own industry composed of businesses that rent furniture, appliances, computers, jewelry and other home products.

Many of APRO’s 5,300 members also belong to The Rental Industry Buying (TRIB) Group (www.tribgroup.com) and attend its annual meeting, which generated $11 million in sales in 2004, according to the show’s Web site. When APRO decided to convert its convention into a buying show, the board of directors set a modest goal of $9 million in sales.

Ferguson formed a buying show committee in January 2004 with the executive director and three staff members. Weekly meetings generated ideas about how to improve upon the TRIB Group model, which focused on vendor specials available only at the show. Buyer incentives topped the list, including complimentary registration for one buyer per company, enough specials for buyers to recoup travel costs, and a drawing for cash giveaways totaling $24,000 (celebrating 24 years in business).

APRO promoted the incentives through newsletter articles and a personal phone call from the board president to each and every member store. They also mailed a spiral-bound book of specials to members and posted specials online. Offers such as buy one, get one free, and free shipping promised significant savings on purchases made at the show.

Before the show, more than half of the exhibiting companies brushed up on their selling techniques by attending one of two 50-minute teleconferences, where board members introduced the buying show concept, recommended specials that would be most effective, and explained how the prize drawing would work. More than half of the 120 exhibiting companies elected to participate in the promotion and advertise specials.

At the show, purchase orders were shrink wrapped into packets of 50 and placed in the booths. When exhibitors wrote orders, they gave buyers copies to enter in the drawing, which was held at the awards banquet on the last day. Drawings were in increments of $6,000, $5,000, $4,000, $3,000, $2,000 and four $1,000 prizes, up to a maximum of the order total. For example, a purchase order for $1,000 in goods was eligible to win up to  $1,000. To maximize their potential to win, buyers could break up their purchase orders into multiple entries.

Of the 190 companies that sent 566 buyers to the APRO 2004 Convention & Buying Show, held Aug. 4–7 at the Tampa Convention Center in Florida, 105 wrote orders on the floor and participated in the prize drawing. The APRO registration desk was inundated with copies of purchase orders totaling $13.2 million. Two staffers entered the data into a computer and printed the prize drawing forms, which proved to be a slow process. Next year, APRO plans to get a high-speed printer.

The biggest order takers were electronics vendors, who sold more than $8 million. Furniture vendors wrote the next highest volume, at $2.5 million, and appliance vendors netted $1 million. Exhibitors who didn’t offer show specials witnessed the traffic their competitors generated and vowed to promote specials at the next show.

The 2005 show marks APRO’s silver anniversary, and they’ll celebrate by giving away $25,000 in cash prizes. Based on the success in 2004, Ferguson plans to raise the sales goal for 2005, as well.

“I’ll see how the [TRIB Group] buying show goes in May, then I’ll set my goal higher than theirs,” she says.