The 2021 MEDCO/ACE Tool Customer Show took place Oct 1-2 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and it broke its previous attendance records with 1,400 attendees this year. With the 2020 show being forced to go virtual due to COVID-19, the industry was eager to get back on the show floor.
"Customers were thrilled that we didn’t cancel this and there was a lot of pent-up demand to get back to seeing people, engaging with people, and, on the customer side, being able to see, and touch, and feel new products,” said Mark Stevens, senior director of category management, collision, at MEDCO, North America’s largest combined paint, body shop supplies and equipment (PBE) and tool and equipment wholesaler for the transportation aftermarket.
The energy was palpable at the show as customers, vendors, and co-workers were finally all under one roof again.
“You can feel the energy on the floor, you can feel it at the events. You pass somebody in the hallway and they are smiling, they’re excited,” said Valerie Adrean, senior director of category management, tools and equipment, at MEDCO.
Attendees, which included mobile tool truck dealers, were not only getting a hands-on experience with the tools and equipment as they went from booth to booth, but they were also sharing tips and tricks amongst each other.
“Customers were making each other better in a non-competing way,” Adrean said. “I overheard a bunch of conversations where they are sharing best practices and ideas: ‘I’ve tried this in my local market, you might want to give it a shot as well.’”
Being able to interact with each other in this way further promotes one goal of the MEDCO show: To help distributors feel that they are supported — by other mobile dealers, suppliers, or MEDCO itself.
This notion is very important to the company’s current president and CEO, Kevin Short, who took on the role in January 2020. He has the utmost empathy for his customers since he has been a distributor his entire career, starting out with 10 years in chemical distribution and then 17 in plastics distribution.
“I’ve walked a few miles in their shoes since all I’ve ever really done is distribution,” he said. “Helping the independent, small distributor thrive in this environment, be the Amazon antidote if you will, is something that is very easy to get up in the morning and get excited about. And watching these small companies thrive is the heartbeat of the North American economy.”
Short is committed to ensuring MEDCO acts smaller as it gets bigger. For example, jobbers don’t care about the company’s 25 distribution centers in North America or its facility in Dubai, they care about the company being fast, flexible, and easy to work with.
“We have to think about ourselves as someone who brings international scale and capability but delivers it at the most local level,” Short said. “As companies scale and get bigger, they tend to get a bit more Draconian about their rules and regulations, but we are going exactly in the opposite direction… We sell to entrepreneurs so we ourselves have to behave and think like entrepreneurs.”
Weathering the COVID storm
A hot topic at the show was the challenges and triumphs over these past 19 months as distributors weathered COVID-19 and continue to face supply chain shortages. MEDCO has been encouraging its customers to get creative and look outside their normal business, such as selling products for RV, marine, and PBE.
“What areas haven’t they touched? Why can’t a mobile guy sell PBE? We started to integrate some of that into our marketing for them and it proved to be a smart step because we have given them another portfolio of product and they don’t need to pass by that shop because they can’t support it with their offering,” said Adrean.
In September, MEDCO also started offering a Spanish version of its monthly flyer to help mobile distributors sell to that demographic as well.
The 2022 MEDCO Customer Show will take place Oct. 7-8 in Tampa, Florida.
