It feels like opening day! Or a Broadway premiere. Or the first day of a new job. The excitement is there, palpable. It’s the future— the potential, excitement, fear, danger, and thrill of something new and unknown.
That is what I am hearing from direct selling executives across the country as we take the next step into this new business environment and marketplace: one of technological change, social shifts, logistics innovations, increased competition, and other unknowns.
“We have to embrace this change and realize that we are all on the threshold of exciting, great things for direct selling!” That is what a wellrespected CEO of a mid-sized, highly involved and innovative direct selling company told me at a recent DSA Board meeting. She has reason to be excited.
Direct sellers are competing against new giants like Amazon and Uber in both product sales and our opportunity, but this competition is taking place on a playing field where direct sellers have played for generations. Who better to take advantage of this renewed taste for flexibility, networking, and entrepreneurship than direct sellers.
The DSA is putting the final touches on DSA’s 2019 Annual Meeting—an event that promises to chart the way forward for direct selling—and our focus is this new playing field.
We laid a solid foundation for growth these past years. The issues of self-regulation, marketplace perceptions, and legal, regulatory, and ethical challenges permeated past annual meetings.
While this work continues, we can now cast our gaze forward with a meeting that focuses on the grand potential awaiting direct selling in this changing marketplace.
We have invited noted futurists, respected CEOs, and leaders from other sectors. A faculty of experienced executives from every type of direct selling company—person-to-person, party plan, big ticket, consumables, new companies, industry veterans and giants, tech companies, and services companies—will impart their wisdom in this premier event for strategy sharing, business development, and personal growth.
Discussions about competing with Amazon, gigs and e-commerce, shifts in social media, the first six months of the DSSRC and the state of direct selling will be held in a safe, secure environment organized by direct selling’s nonprofit incubator of progress, sharing and change— the Direct Selling Association. And while we have plenty of opportunities to evaluate and the myriad of services offered by industry suppliers in a high-quality trade exhibit hall, there will also be unrivaled opportunities for peer-to-peer discussions in a secure non-competitive environment.
I hope you will take the opportunity to join the other executives who are already filling up the DSA hotel room block in Austin, Texas on June 2-4. Register today at annualmeeting. dsa.org. I look forward to seeing you there and engaging in this exciting and potential-filled discussion
