The Peter Jowett Supplier winner Matt de Pater from Mondelēz International thoroughly enjoyed the NACS Show and AACS Study Tour.
His highlights are as follows:
On Friday President Brad Heetland and General Sales Manager Charles Lawton greeted suppliers and took them through the Coremark Distribution Centre. Matt says, “Coremark is the 2nd largest convenience distributor in the USA, who would deliver this fresh food, including fresh fruit and bread, on a daily basis if necessary and it’s amazing how well their distribution system has been built”.
On Saturday Matt did a brilliant presentation but it was the Australians that took the Supplier Award (Cameron Bird from Coca-Cola) and Retailer Award (Stephanie Foster from BP). Matt has some very sound advice for future Peter Jowett competitors, “We both got to see everyone else’s presentations and noticed that their actual PowerPoint looked like it had been built by a company, not an individual, and it looked very professional. This might be my only feedback and advice for the future NZ winners, is that they should spruce up their presentations as much as they can before they travel abroad to Las Vegas to give them a fair chance of winning, as our competitors ideas were not necessarily that much better than our own”.
Speaking about the rest of the NACS Show, Matt remarks, “The actual conference was gigantic, with hundreds of booths showing off new products and it was amazing to take it all in and see from a supplier perspective what direction suppliers were taking”.
“I definitely feel like I have gained a lot of knowledge from this experience and I would recommend it to anyone even slightly interested in convenience retailing to attend this event next year and learn how a much larger market is tackling bigger, but very similar obstacles that we currently have here in New Zealand as well,” concludes Matt.
NZACS is extremely proud of both our NZ winners and we are really pleased that the trip was of benefit to you and your companies.
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