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JANUARY 2016 •
PPB
• 63
1
“Do I know what it
takes to make or keep
the business successful?
Do I have the energy
and the resources to
make it happen?
Ira Neaman
President, Vantage Apparel
2
“Do I really know what
business I'm in, or am I
confusing what we
use
with what we
do
?”
Gregg Emmer
VP and CMO, Kaeser & Blair
3
“How will we balance
the online shopping
habits of our clients
with the brand stan-
dards required by
their employers and
the product safety
standards required by
the government?
Elizabeth Tate, CAS
Chairman/CEO, Signet, Inc.
4
“Web sales or
personal sales?
Alone or in
partnership?”
Francesco Indrio
CEO, Alpi International Ltd.
15
TOUGH
QUESTIONS
Indrio explains:
“I chose these two questions because I don’t even have an answer for them.
Today things have changed and the internet is causing people to shorten their attention spans.
In other words, previously one could make a presentation to a customer and rely on a certain
amount of personal communication. Today, both distributors and suppliers tend to have a split
second of the customers’ attention through electronic media. Previously the quality of the prod-
uct and its characteristics could be explained at length. That tends to not happen anymore. The
distributor who shows his wares online can only rely on the moment in which the end user clicks
on an item, so he has to have all the information there at the customer’s disposal before the cus-
tomer clicks on something else. And often the supplier has to provide that information so it can
be seen, selected and used in that split second. It is a new and fast-changing world out there.