What an amazing time last week at OPESSA.  Lots to share, and feel free to provide any of your thoughts or experiences as well.

After I checked into the beautiful Mission Hills Resort in Rancho Mirage, CA, I noticed I had a small red dot on my OPEESA name badge.  I was denoted a “first timer.”  Kinda felt like a rite of passage for entering my big brother’s tree fort highlighting to all in the club that I am a newbie.  While this must be true for the OPESSA show, it doesn’t reflect Black Ink’s over 15 years of experience in providing analytical support to the Manufacturing sector.  Nonetheless, Sunday night’s Welcome Reception was just that. All in attendance were very engaging and gracious to meet up with the guy with the red dot, and me extending my hands to others with the same red mark.  Ted Finn was a true gentleman and made me feel welcome right out of the gate.  Thanks Ted.  Of course, I saw lots of familiar companies, such as ARI Network Services who too serves the broader Manufacturing space, and a few Black Ink customers as well.

As an affiliate member of OPEESA, Black Ink Technologies had the opportunity to present its brand to some 200 attendees.  We chose Gold to help offset the speaker costs, and it seemed fitting in the spirit of the recent Olympics.

We elected to offer out a Black Ink swag bag filled with fun stuff.  Goodies ranged from chocolate bars, power blocks for cell phones, and ear buds.  The customary golf balls, tees and ball markers were in the bag to support the 64 golfers who participated in Monday’s match on Pete Dye.  What a spectacular course and breathtaking views of a 6,000+ foot mountain range. Our team survived a string of opening bogies. We finally settled down, got some birdies and made one over par to close out the round.  Good times with representatives from Wells Fargo, Schillers Ground Care and Hayward Distributing.

Black Ink also offered out some free SPA certificates to lucky attendees.  We hope they enjoyed it.  A free subscription to Black Ink’s CRM was also offered up, the winner of which will be announced this week. 

I did get a chance to take the Palm Springs Tram – the world’s largest rotating tramway and the only rotating tramway in the Western Hemisphere.  Being up 8,500 feet is quite stunning.  The picture below is from the top looking down to the parking lot.

Gary Lobaza, of MTD Consumer Products, did a terrific job outlining the future growth trends for both gas and battery across various product categories, such as hand-held blowers, trimmers, zero turn mowers and more.  Herb Meyer, a keynote for the day who worked in the Reagan administration as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council, had a fascinating presentation discussing some of the positive changes occurring in the world, including world population trends, the millions of people moving out of poverty and the pitch to sell convenience to aging baby boomers.  As the world becomes more progressive, gains discretionary income and would rather “shop than fight,” Herb projects entertainment, energy, food, technology, and infrastructure industries will be on the rise in BRIC and other emerging markets.  He footnotes that by stating the US is the leader in all of those 5 industries today.  As an aside, I was personally impressed that Meyer held court for 90 minutes without one slide. Very engaging speaker indeed.

On Tuesday, Paul Reilly, of Reilly Sales Training, and Gene Marks, a well-known business counselor, provided additional color commentary to aide the attendees on a variety of topics, ranging from value added selling to how the tax plan, HR and yes, CRM will help the OPEESA members.  We were delighted to hear about the CRM because, well, that is one of the products Black Ink provides for the OPE industry.  In the breakout session, I attended Gene’s talk in which he spent more time exploring the value of CRM systems in a crowded field. It was refreshing to hear that many of the attendees still need to push this process further to help them deepen their relationship with dealers, distributors and end users.

After consuming all that great content, a beer at poolside was invigorating.  However, it was time to pack up, and prepare for our trek back to LAX.  We departed at 5AM for the 120-mile ride and slogged through 3.5 hours of typical LA traffic. It was safe to say that I wasn’t getting along too well with the navigation system telling me to re-rout every 15 minutes.

A special shout out to Nancy Cueroni and Jackie Rummage who worked so hard to make the event happen smoothly.