FORDS, N.J. -- While the curious October heat wave kept winter at bay for much of the Northeast and Midwest, members of the Asian American Retailers Association (AARA) spent an afternoon away from their stores to spend a little time inside.
Springfield, N.J.-based AARA held its third trade show on Friday, Oct. 5, at Royal Albert's Palace, an ornate gathering spot tucked neatly into a central New Jersey commercial hub. Based on the number of independent retailers attending the event, out-of-sync weather patterns weren't the only things showing signs [image-nocss] of life when others expect them to go dormant.
The cigarette business in New Jersey is going down and down, so it's getting a little tougher, but the market for our stores is there, H.R. Harry Shah told CSP Daily News at the AARA trade show for owners of convenience stores, gas stations and liquor stores. This business is not going to die.
Shah, chairman of AARA, who's also chairman and CEO of Edison, N.J.-based Krauszer's National Food Stores, helped welcome approximately 1,500 retailers from New Jersey and contiguous states. Royal Albert's Palace's exposition space housed nearly 100 vendors, peddling everything from tobacco and packaged beverages to employment-law services and low-cost airfares to Southeast Asia.
The show is wonderful, said Amul Parikh of Parikh & Parikh Associates, Cherry Hill, N.J., which runs convenience stores and hotels in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. I've never seen a show like this; it's good for vendors and good for buyers. It will grow more and more. This is only the beginning.
In the future, AARA would like to expand the scope of the show to include more educational opportunities to help retailers improve profitability and fine-tune operations, according to Prashant Desai, AARA secretary and owner of five Krauszer's stores in New Jersey. In the future, the organization expects to expand its membership beyond its current borders, to include chapters across the country.
Our model is changing, said Satish Poondi, director of policy for AARA, who also runs a pharmacy in New York. Part of what we're doing is educating our members. Small businesses don't always get the attention they deserve or require. If you're a vendor, you're going to spend most of your time with the large chains. But to the retailer with just one store, his business is very important. It's his livelihood.
Retailers attending the event, which ranged from single-store operators to those such as Parikh, who runs a network of more than 20 stores and other complementary businesses, used their time on the show floor to network and catch up with old friends. More importantly, they used it to discover new products, speak with vendors about special discounts, and gather tools to help them grow their business, such as advice for optimizing shelf space by category.
This stuff is important, Poondi said. For us in the Indian-American community, retail is an economic lifeline.
Vendors also reported a positive experience.
So far we've had an excellent response, said Bill Fong, field manager for spirits vendor Jersey/National Capitol Wine & Liquor Co., Kearny, N.J. This is a good opportunity for people to sample products away from their stores, where they can focus and seize the opportunity to expand what they're selling.
One vendorThe Beverage Works of N.Y. Inc., a Red Bull distributorused the show to offer retailers a glimpse of a new SKU: Red Bull in a 16.6-oz. can. These are the first retail customers to see it, said sales manager Jesus Navas. We've got three or four new customers already by being here. He said the new Red Bull SKU will hit store shelves early next month.
Smaller, independent operators are the bread and butter of many vendors because they represent significant volume, according to Edward Moravek, a district manager for Pepsi. They hear rumblings of a big, new store coming in and they want know how they can compete better, he said. We can help them with that.
Other vendors shared similar insights.
We see [independents] as a growing market, said Jeff Allen, president of Allen Bros. Wholesale Distribution, Philadelphia, which supplies c-store staples to locations in Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. A lot of these retailers are guys that have Exxons and BPs and Lukoils, so when the chains sell off stores, these guys move in and take over.
Jasal Amin, AARA's executive vice president, said the trade show has grown significantly since the association held its first trade show in Atlantic City in 2005. This year the association had to turn down a lot of vendors due to high demand and limited space, he said.
This is our third year, and we won't be able to have it here next yeartoo small, Amin said. [Small retailers] have to compete with the Wawas, the 7-Elevens, the bigger competitors. They need something like this.
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