Educating yourself for greater success (updated from Sunday)

Mootz Run Tea table at Coffee Fest. My photo doesn't do it justice. Imagine dressing a store window like this to launch your tea program...

This weekend is the Coffee Fest conference trade show at the Washington Convention Center in DC. They have this event in various venues around the country each year. I was doing something else Friday morning, when the seminars started -- each morning there are seminars before the exhibit floor opens at noon.

Saturday I went to three excellent presentations (and snagged the materials from two others), one was on developing your store as a branded emotional experience, another on hiring great employees and reducing theft, and the third a very focused session on writing the business plan in a realizable fashion (breaking it down into sections, starting with the executive summary written as a letter to a friend).

Each of these programs would make excellent sessions for a local-regional conference promoting the development of small businesses. While their examples (except in the first sessions) focused primarily on coffee shops (and restaurants), the general points would be useful to most independent retailers.

These are the kinds of programs and conferences that local business development initiatives need to sponsor. I was impressed with how many people attended the seminars. There were 4 to 6 programs in each time block, and the sessions I attended had from 150-200 people in the audience.
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Updated: The Examiner ran an article about the conference on Saturday, "Coffee Fest trade show heats up Washington," although the paper was delivered after I already left to go to the conference. Sunday had some good sessions as well, including one on consumer trends, from a marketing person from Torani Syrups. She had some good insights. It would also be a great session in a local conference on promoting and developing independent businesses.

Peter Giuliano, director of Coffee at Counter Culture Coffee, Inc. is seen cupping coffee, which is the equivalent of a wine tasting for coffee where beans from around the world are sampled for fragrance, aroma and taste. Greg Whitesell/Examiner.

Businesses should send their staff to conferences like this one, and pay them for attending. Talk about building the competence and knowledge of your employees. DC has such an advantage over many venues because conferences such as this one occur here all the time, because of the attractiveness of the city to visitors.

Index Keywords: retail