Looking Ahead at 2016: Business Building Opportunities One at a Time

By: Patrick Walsh, Vice President, Supply Chain & Chief Business Development Officer, Food Marketing Institute

Whether you’re a family-and women-owned business that offers a wide variety of high-quality specialty food products or a highly targeted coupon system that gives consumers a free, streamlined way to keep track of and redeem offers, one way or another you have experienced business challenges in reaching new and valued partners. 

In the food retail business community, there is intense competition among product manufacturers to reach food, drug and mass retailers. FMI aims to create a wider collaboration network that’ll allow suppliers both small and large to connect with individuals responsible for making business decisions.

Here at FMI, we’re committed to enhancing our associate members working relationship with food retailers and providing better business processes. Through our portfolio of industry relations and Total Store Collaboration (TSC) platform, our associate members are able to benefit from exclusive opportunities to interact and collaborate with senior-level retail and wholesale executives.

In an effort to keep our members moving forward, we’ve lined up a number of business building and collaboration opportunities for 2016.

Here is a sampling of the event-based opportunities that we’ll have in 2016 that create one-on-one meeting opportunities for our members to connect, explore trading partner relationship and program selling programs or services to run operations:

FMI Midwinter Executive Conference
January 23-26, 2016
The Strategic Executive Exchange (SEE) program, one of the most rewarding aspects of FMI’s Midwinter Executive Conference, engages senior level retail decision-makers and creates an environment through which meaningful exchange with a variety of industry trading partners and counterparts in the CPG, technology and service provider industries can take place.  Over the span of the three day event, our members have found great value in the conversations establishing strategy and shaping future direction.

FMI Connect Business Exchange (CBX)
June 20-23, 2016
Returning to Chicago in 2016 at McCormick Place (South Hall), FMI will expand on the Connect Business Exchange (CBX) – building on the more than 1,700 one-on-one meetings that happened this year and include individual scheduled meetings for exhibitors with many of the nation’s food retailers and wholesalers.

CBX puts food retailers in touch with the right kind of suppliers, ones they might not otherwise discover. For example, you could meet an independent, family-owned business whose meats come from free-range, grass-fed cattle and are handled humanely and processed in the cleanest facilities possible. Or perhaps you’ll encounter a dried beans supplier whose product is grown and raised by the same family-owned business for more than 100 years. CBX allows you to meet with companies you never expected, but are supplying the products that appeal to your customer’s values.  

Annual Business Conference (ABC)
September 18-21, 2016
While the Strategic Executive Exchange (SEE) program focuses on the strategic conversation, the Annual Business Conference (ABC) targets the mid to top-level management who shoulder the responsibility of implementing the new plans sparked by the SEE meetings. These meetings allow trading partners to communicate goals and operational concerns in an effort to achieve greater efficiency and profitability. To help harmonize and synchronize FMI’s collaboration event platforms, FMI has moved ABC to September to provide a more efficient and effective industry calendar of events for our trading partners.

In addition to these collaboration opportunities, FMI hosts a variety of education and networking events our associate members can participate as a sponsor, exhibitor or attendee. Click to see our 2016 calendar of events and plan your 2016 calendar for the maximum business building opportunities.