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Atlanta, Georgia
Three quarters of 2015 has quietly and rap-idly passed by. Isn’t it funny, that time really does fly by when you’re having fun and en-joying what you do. Or, is it really true that our parents, grandparents and elders told us when we were younger, “the older you get, the faster the years pass.” I read an article on this theory a few years ago and the cal-culations made sense. Need to locate this again and share.
So much for flying time, Q4 is here and will bring brisk business, as well as two im-portant holiday seasons. Through the past weeks at the Meeting of the Minds, APRO Legislative Conference and Midwest RTO EXPO I have had many conversations about business. My observation has been very positive; many dealers are reporting record breaking months recently, solid summer business and all have a very positive out-look for a great fourth quarter. This is evi-dent in how aggressively members placed
orders with vendors during the Meeting of the Minds and the recent reports coming from vendors that reorders are already pour-ing in showing that business has been good in September.
Q4 along with Q1 has been for many years the months that really shine with deliveries and revenue. As members rev-up advertis-ing for Black Friday deals and Christmas promotions, everyone is dreaming of a fan-tastic fourth quarter. As we all prepare for Thanksgiving and Christmas, don’t forget about Halloween. What a great time to do something special and fun for the employ-ees and customers. Remember, a lot of the time it is the little things we do that is re-membered the most.
Have a great October and enjoy the chang-ing of the seasons!
Dennis
Member Owned. Member Run.
Tampa, Florida
TRIB Group is proud to announce our next winter Think Tank which will be held during the Las Vegas Furniture Market taking place January 24-28, 2015.
This furniture market Think Tank will obvious-ly have a little different format from the typical Think Tanks. Attendees will meet Monday and Tuesday mornings at the Las Vegas Fur-niture World Market Center Complex, before heading out for the days scheduled vendor meetings and furniture shopping.
During each morning’s TRIB meetings, mem-bers will discuss our furniture business as well as other current industry topics. As part of these morning meetings, each of our furni-ture vendors that help sponsor this Think Tank will be given the opportunity to address the attendees for 15 minutes to educate them about their company, TRIB program, product, price, sales force, manufacturing, distribu-tions, etc.
The World Center Market is a beautiful and attendee friendly campus comprised of three
buildings that are all connected and range from ten to sixteen stories each. Following the morning meetings and member lunches, attendees can shop the market on their own or attend scheduled showroom visits with TRIB. The market opens Sunday, so at-tendees should plan arriving early to spend-ing time in showrooms that afternoon to get a jump on their shopping.
A block of rooms has been reserved at the Golden Nugget, a great downtown hotel that is close to the market. Room rates are $105 a night and will be booked through TRIB. TRIB Group will support your attendance by provid-ing $300 to each member company that at-tends the meeting, even if you choose to book your room at another hotel.
Watch for more details, as well as attendee and hotel registration information via email and our website. If you have never visited the Vegas Market, this is the perfect opportunity.
More info at : tribgroup.com/news
High Point, North Carolina
President: SHANNON STRUNK
Baber’s, Inc. [email protected]
Vice President: DAN FISHER
Majik Enterprises [email protected]
Treasurer: MIKE TISSOT
Countryside Rentals d/b/a Rent-2-Own [email protected]
Secretary: MARTY AUBLE
Appliance & Furniture RentAll [email protected]
CHRIS BOLIN
Bolin Rental Purchase [email protected]
BEN BOST
Smart Way of the Carolinas [email protected]
JEFF LEBAKKEN
Lebakken’s Inc of Wisconsin [email protected]
KEN SCHIMPF
DAKCOMP, Inc. [email protected]
KRISTINA SMALLWOOD
Great Rooms [email protected]
2775 Cruse Road, Suite 2401
Lawrenceville, Georgia 30044
Dennis Shields, Executive Director
Jena Gress, PR & Admin Coordinator
Karl Wicker, Services Coordinator
as of
September 30, 2015
More Than A Virtue
We have all heard the old adage; pa-tience is a virtue. I believe that pa-tience is more than a virtue, it’s a learned response and critical when interacting with customers, clients, employees, basically everybody. Re-cently I had a chance to realize this firsthand.
Through the health plan which my wife and I are enrolled, we have a medical debit card to handle the co-pays and other sundry medical expenses not covered by our insurance. The funds for this card are from deductions made from my wife’s pay before taxes. This works except when there are disputed charges deemed unacceptable under the law that governs medical debit cards. When there is a violation (or perceived violation) the card is put on hold and access to the moneys (your money) is denied. This was the case when earlier this year our medical debit card was frozen because of a charge made in 2014. My wife, Renée called then emailed and seemingly the matter was corrected, or so we thought. Renée continued for three or four months to send receipts to offset the claim in dispute but nothing was acceptable to resolve the issue.
Anyone who really knows me under-stands that patience is not my strong suit. As hard as I work to control my impatient nature (and I WORK HARD at it) it will show particularly when I am pressed for time, tired or trying to jug-gle many things at once. So I asked Renée to let me try to make sense of the issue. So I called the med card people. Now I must admit I went into the call defensive, but still trying to be open enough to make heads or tails of this tangled ball of string. After two days of calling, my patience was no-
where to be found and I was ready to “nuke the place to morbid.” Part of my impatience was the fact that I was get-ting different answers from each per-son I spoke with and there was little incentive on the end of the med card representatives to offer a solution. I can only guess my impatience was leading to their being impatient with me. So after a very heated exchange I was disconnected. I gathered myself, calmed my demeanor and called once more.
Enter Lisa; I finally spoke with some-one who was willing to counter my impatience with patience. She was very calming in her tone and apparent-ly very interested in finding a solution. She took her time in a very relaxed and calming way to explain what her company needed to resolve the issue and for the med debit card to become usable once more. After I emailed the information Lisa requested she fol-lowed up with a call and an email to reassure me that we were now able to access our medical debit funds.
We live in a social environment where civility has become less common than ever before. I’m sure the easy access to media and social networks are a big part of this, but I also believe we have all become victims of a lack of pa-tience. Patience requires a willingness to understand both sides of a conflict and be willing to work towards a solu-tion. Without becoming “preachy”, pa-tience is the application of the golden rule, “treat others as you yourself would want to be treated.”
If we all work towards being patient we will be better bosses, sales reps, em-ployees, husbands, fathers, wives, mothers… better persons. Than pa-tience will be more than a virtue, it will be part of our lives.
All of the TRIB Group committees: Ap-pliance-Outdoor, Electronics, Furniture, Specialty, Marketing, and Software-Financial, will be meeting in Atlanta with the current and perspective vendors throughout the month of November. Each committee is formed largely by TRIB Group member volunteers. These volunteers give selflessly of their time to benefit all members with programs tai-lored for TRIB Group Members.
If you have any comments, suggestions, complaints, or concerns about a vendor, feel free to share it . Please, email your responses to Dennis at [email protected] and it will be for-warded to the appropriate committee. Remember, the committees are working on your behalf so your input and ques-tions help ensure our vendor program is the best it can be for all of our mem-bers.
Furniture of America has been a TRIB Group approved vendor since 2013. Furniture of America is an employee owned company with over 20 years in the furniture industry. FOA believes that being em-ployee owned brings with it a greater commitment to service and val-ue.
FOA has over 1.5 million square feet of product availability distribut-ed over five regional facilities in: Los Angeles and Fresno, California; Farmers Branch, Texas; Norcross, Georgia and Secaucus, New Jer-sey.
Furniture of America features unique and diverse styling that sets them apart from other furniture companies. They also offer replace-ment part services that are tailored specifically for the RTO industry. Availability, aggressive pricing, service, readily available parts and well-stocked regional warehouses allows Furniture of America to meet the needs of TRIB Group members and provide “More Value for Less, Always!”
Our contact for Furniture of America is Michael Blaugrund
email: [email protected], phone: (909) 718-7276 ext 161
TRIB Group Member companies turned out in force at the recent Midwest RTO EXPO hosted by the Ohio Rental Dealers Association.
The EXPO featured four seminars lead by well respected TRIB Group member owners and of-ficers, and a packed buy fair featuring mostly TRIB approved vendors. The event was capped off with several training sessions put on by expe-rienced RTO vendors. It was great to see the huge turnout for this event and see the eighteen TRIB Group member companies from the Mid-west in attendance!
3Q2015 is now closed and quar-terly reports will need to be com-pleted on our web-site.
Please designate a person inside your business to take care of these im-portant reports.
If you have
questions or
problems, please contact Karl
at 770-451-4302.