The record number of resellers attending this year’s VOW Green Light event heard the organisation is making their lives easier by focusing on three key areas.
Adrian Butler, managing director of the leading business products and facilities supplies wholesaler, said these priorities were improving customers’ experience, creating opportunities for them to sell more and being innovative.
He said VOW’s focus on these fields was designed to help make it a world class wholesaler and the progress it had made in them already, which would accelerate in the new year, meant customers should expect more from his organisation during 2018.
Green Light also included a video, featuring contributions from over a dozen VOW staff, outlining initiatives the company had undertaken during 2017 under the three key headings.
These included the organisation’s unique Product Conveyor, which VOW says has revolutionised the channel and delivered a quantum leap in reseller competitiveness. This allows resellers to order new products as they become available throughout the year, rather than relying on the industry’s traditional rigid merchandising and annual catalogue cycle.
The video also highlighted VOW’s £1m investment during 2017 in key growth categories, such as furniture, facilities supplies and its 10 exclusive brands. Also featured were the initiatives launched to resellers under the VOW Venture programme including the numerous sales and product training events, the VOW Venture rewards scheme as well as its latest added value service offering GreensafeIT.
This year’s Green Light, at Birmingham’s Hilton Metropole Hotel, attracted over 400 resellers. In addition to contributions from Adrian, the conference included a speech by Steve Haworth, chief executive officer of the EVO group of companies, which includes VOW, and presentations by external business experts Nigel Risner and Geoff Ramm.
Green Light also featured an exhibition, involving more than 70 suppliers and included top TV presenter and radio DJ Vernon Kay. He: presented awards recognising outstanding suppliers, products and resellers at the gala dinner; compèred a game, based on Family Fortunes – the long-running hit ITV show he hosted – involving teams of attendees; and delivered a DJ set at the after-show party.
Adrian said later: “We’re delighted with the way this year’s Green Light went. Feedback from resellers attending already strongly indicates they found it hugely useful and enjoyable. Part of it was about communicating all the work we’re doing – often behind the scenes and not that visible to them – to make their lives easier and they seem to have understood and appreciated this.
“The 2017 event definitely went up a level and we believe Green Light’s already high profile as one of the industry’s must-attend events of the year has taken another leap forward.”
Attendee Mark Watson, sales director of reseller Everything Office, based in Lowestoft, Suffolk, said: “Congratulations and thank you to VOW for putting on a great Green Light event. We thoroughly enjoyed the excellent speakers and took loads of good information back to implement into our own business…very useful. We thought that Vernon Kay was really good value and got into the spirit of it very well…another great evening.”
