"Meet the Retailers"- Saturday 12/8 at 8am

This year we're introducing a new alternative to our signature speed-networking activity. This Meet and Greet is designed to move quickly and help deepen relationships! 

It’s organized chaos – loud, energizing, and fun! 

• Retailers are seated at stations 1-26
• Partners are pre-assigned starting stations and will have a schedule of "appointments".
• Partners have been assigned to groups of vendors based on your partnership level. There may be 1, 2, or 3 other vendor companies in your group. You will receive your schedule, map of the networking space, and group assignment upon check-in and badge pickup.  
• You and your group members will have 5 minutes total to introduce yourselves and ask a few quick questions.  After time has elapsed, you will all move to the next retailer table. 
  • ​We request you respect the time limits and your fellow vendors during this exercise.  This includes not monopolizing the group's time and moving to the next station according to your appointment schedule.  We have a lot of folks who wish to meet and we want to give equal opportunity to everyone.
• This meet and greet session is scheduled early in the conference program.  There will be additional opportunities to connect with those you'd like to speak with in more detail.  We will have an extended break Saturday afternoon just for this purpose.​

Tips for Success

Some things to think about to help you plan for success:

• This session is not designed for speedy product presentations.  
• Refine your message –your 60 second story or elevator pitch.  Have it ready and say succinctly what you would like to achieve or learn.
• Bring 50 or more business cards
  • ​​Sounds basic but you wouldn’t believe the number of people who run out of cards before the event is over, or didn’t think to bring them along. Take plenty, you may get the chance to meet more people than you expect.
• ​We highly recommend that you bring something to take notes with, such as a tablet or notebook
• We highly discourage bringing giveaways, printed material, or catalogs to distribute.   If you have digital materials to distribute, please put it on a USB drive and give to Alicia.  Even better; send it to Alicia via email or file transfer program.  Your materials will then be posted on your company's profile page within our Retailer Resource site for all CDG stores to access
• You might wish to prepare a specific question or focus that you could ask any of our retailers (some ideas include, marketing plans, product development, etc).   ​

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