Conference 2013

[Lawrence]

For all those that attended and contributed to the recent Whitegoods Conference please accept our heartfelt thanks for your involvement and we hope that you found the conference to be, as ever, as useful and productive as ever.

Our apologies for the late start this time but, due to some unexpected late availability of the meeting room and the late arrival of the AV equipment the meeting was stalled for a short time. However, that did not deter the WTA team and other enthusiastic people from working till after 1am the night before to set the meeting room up, print name badges and much more in preparation for the following day.

The meeting commenced with an introduction and short update on WTA progress from the current chair, Lawrence Carey.

Lawrence detailed some of the progress that had been made as well as informing about the WTA’s work over the past year with various manufacturer’s and government bodies to help the members interests.

Much of this information can be found in real time within the WTA member forums but a summary of this was given.

We then had a talk by both Lawrence and Kenneth Watt of UK Whitegoods on customer service in general using the amusing “Dallas taxi driver” story to highlight the perceptions that customers have and, how we can do better as an industry in this respect.
As usual with these presentations the actual presentation was merely a collection of bullet points around which a live and vibrant talk was given with all the information being presented in that medium.

The next talk was by Ian Dales and Lawrence on progress with DEFRA, WRAP and others in respect to repairs, reuse and recycling. The talk explained some of the thinking behind current government policies and where it was likely to go in the future as well as how the WTA was helping input member’s opinion.

After lunch Malcolm Scott from Swift Distribution gave an update on industry trends with the main point being that the built in and integrated sector continues to grow despite the glut of bad news in the media about retailers going bust.

Much of the rest of the day was left open in response to requests from attendees and members feedback from previous meetings asking that more time was allowed for people to browse the stands and take meetings. We listened and left as much of the day as possible free to allow for these wishes.

Feedback that we have received thus far has indicated that everyone thoroughly enjoyed the meeting as well as finding it very productive and, on occasion, lucrative as well from contacts made.

It was in all a very successful meeting with a few interesting contacts made from the WTA’s perspective, as a management team we met with a representative of the RDI institute with a view to an affiliation of some sort as they have some members that operate in the whitegoods sector whilst the WTA has some members that operate in the Brown goods sector.
We will update you with regards to progress as soon as we are able.

Repair Tech were present in the form of their whole service team to not only display their products but to meet the WTA members who form their network of engineers and also to thank the WTA for facilitating access to the membership.

AWS services announced that they had obtained the Nardi service work and were intending to use WTA members to service these appliances; they have also secured the distribution rights in the UK for GE spares.

CK Tools Were present and displaying some of their range.

The WTA have agreed an arrangement to distribute their products
It is our intention that WTA members will be able to order items via WTA Admin and attract a discount of retail prices.
The fine details of this are being thrashed out and an announcement will be made in due course, so watch this space.

We had further discussions with an insurance brokers with regards to services they could offer members, again watch this space.

We also had positive discussions with a training institute with regards to gas safe qualifications, soft skills training, and refrigeration systems training.

As you can see there was a lot going on behind the scenes, it is the management teams aim to make next years conference as vibrant and relevant as possible,
This will include creative publicity and a much longer lead up to the event .

Finally if there is anyone you know that would like to exhibit please ask them to contact WTA admin as space is filling up already as most of this years stands have requested a repeat stand and at least two more companies have put there names down

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