We had a question from a blog reader the other day about "room sales" at the annual HLCCA Conference. If you attended the Annual Business Meeting on Sunday morning in Pittsburgh this year, you'll recall that this matter came up when an HLCCA member announced that he had conducted a room sale in his suite on Saturday during the Show and Sale.
The HLCCA Board's position on this matter is that we do not encourage, condone or sanction room sales at the annual HLCCA Conference. The Board expends a great deal of effort each year to make sure that the greatest possible variety of dealers can have booths at the Show and Sale. The (nominal) fee charged to dealers covers the cost of table rentals, which the HLCCA must incur. For individual HLCCA members who have items to sell, HLCCA offers a consignment table. HLCCA benefits from these consigned items by collecting a small percentage of the sale price of each item.
The HLCCA Board believes that room sales pose unfair competition for dealers at the Show and Sale, and that they deprive HLCCA of an important source of revenue. The Board also believes that the majority of conference attendees value the Show and Sale as one of the "centerpieces" of each year's conference. This being said, however, the Board has no desire to become the "Room Sale Police." We do not have the time and resources to try to regulate what individual HLCCA members may choose to do in their own hotel rooms. We simply trust that members will use their own best judgement and sense of fairness in how they choose to conduct themselves at the annual conference.
2 comments:
Hall China conference does room sales & their dealers participate. Their conference last year had quite a few dealers at their show & sale (more than HLCCA's conference). We feel it is because of the room sales Hall has more dealers participate in their show & sale. The dealers have more time to sell their products over the entire weekend, instead of just a couple hours at the show & sale. If dealers make more money over the weekend they are more inclined to come back each year. However, NO ROOM SALES are conducted DURING the show & sale.
How about charging people who want to have a room sale the fee so that HLCCA can benefit? Or move to all dealers have room sales format? In addition to Hall, there was a pottery lovers conference the week after this year's Pittsburgh contest, where the entire preceeding week was all room sales.
Post a Comment