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The Forum, marking the Association’s 25th year of operation, was attended by 130 sporting goods industry representatives, from wholesalers, suppliers, retailers, National Sporting Organisations, government agencies and private enterprise.
The Forum theme was “Driving Industry Growth Beyond 2010” and also featured inaugural awards for “Product Innovation of the Year” and “Retail professional development program of the year”, designed to reward excellence in our industry.
The "Retail Professional Development Program of the Year" was awarded to the Retailer who encourages employees to further their development in the sporting goods industry by undertaking a specifically "tailored" professional development program.
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Retail award winners, Footlocker - Asia Pacific have designed an in-house training and professional development program that offers new employees, from day one, a carefully designed four stage process. The final element in the Foot Locker process is the Traineeship where employees are encourages to work towards attaining this nationally recognised qualification, acknowledges by any retailer in Australia. Lew Kimble the Managing Director accepted this award on Foot Lockers behalf. |
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| Lew Kimble with Ross Langdon |
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Callaway’s FTI driver and the Nike+ range from Nike shared the 2006 Product Innovation of the year award. |
| L-R : Paul Zadoff (Nike Australia), Ross Langdon (ASGA) & Keith Oliver (Callaway Golf Sth Pacific) |
ASGA Executive Director Sean Cary opened the proceedings and gave an insight into the organisation’s key projects, including lobbying federal government with objective of placing a physical education practitioner in every primary school throughout Australia, physical education to form part of the school hour’s curriculum and to increase sporting goods resources to match the increase in activity.
The aim of the conference was to provide sporting goods industry representatives with the opportunity to hear, first hand, from some of Australia’s highest profile professionals and identities.
Feature presentations included:
- A panel discussion entitled “Counterfeit activity in the sporting goods industry, presented by John Rhodes (Global Brand Protection) Sean Carroll (adidas) and Stephen Stern (Corrs Lawyers).
- Mark Textor from Crosby Textor Market Research, who highlighted the opportunities available to the Australian sporting goods industry with prominent election topics concerning health, and in particular childhood obesity.
- Stephen Kulmar from Idea Works who gave an insight into supply driven volume markets and other retail trends and truths which was highly applauded
- David Parkin’s presentation “Super Coach – Super Manager – Super Leader” address gave participants an insight into what it would have been like as an AFL Footballer under his tutelage – pretty scary! David challenged the audience to understand “what we are here for” and whether we are prepared to reinvent ourselves to remain relevant beyond 2010. This was a lively presentation and it kept the attendees on the edge of their seats.
- GFK’s Business Development Manager, Simon Perks and CEO, Garry Lamb provided Forum participants an insight into what it would be like to have retail sales tracking data available to the sporting goods industry. Sales data analysis has become extremely important for effective business operations, and the level of sophistication of retail tracking data will certainly enhance the operations of all sporting goods businesses.
- Martin McKinnon from Zenith Optimedia gave an insight into how research was killing creative advertising. "We need to have less fear, not just about creativity but about business generally," he told the Forum audience as quoted in the Caxton newspaper advertising awards last year. "The fear is about corporate failure and not doing the right thing and pleasing 50,000 stakeholders.” Martin paved the way for Edwina Ricci, from Sporting Pulse, to explain how better to target the end consumer.
- SportingPulse’s Australian online community and social network is made up of over 2,000,000 grass roots sporting participants, and they are replicating this model in over 100 countries around the world. Partnering with various sporting bodies, including the IOC, International and National Federations as well as relevant corporate organisations and suppliers, SportingPulse is at the leading edge of the new media revolution. Edwina explained how ASGA Members can use their digital medium to advertise and promote their products, whilst at the same time inject valuable financial resources into ‘grass roots’ sport.
For those who attended it provided a chance to share industry information and intelligence. Industry experts provided new business tools for participants to utilise within their own environment. Importantly, everyone who attended was challenged to “rethink” the way they conduct their business.
ASGA looks forward to providing the industry with a similar experience in twelve months time.
