The Soft Pitch

When your from Chicago THE neighboorhood beer is Old Style…many folks have made toasts and given congrats with this beer here…so while in Chicago for the recent NEDA annual event the disty, semi, passive manufacturers and even the media attendees were smiling and relaxed compared to last year and raised an Old Style to relieve the pressure. Hopefully we will also add champagne to that toast one day.

The optimism was lead by the speakers including a Northern Trust economist and forecasters like iSupply and Bishop Reports…all predicted 2010 as being a gradual double digit % climb back to life as we remembered.  Kudos to our industry for screwing up as bad in 2001…forecasting and supply chain lessons were learned. 4 out of 10 years were not very good this decade…let’s see if we can avoid that many ruts in the 2nd decade of 21st century.

I felt it was productive program but the it’s the enthusiasm was contagious. Sure there are demand creation issues, counterfeiters, green issues, gross margin pressure…and everyone said they would not take unprofitable business and play nice…yeah whatever on that one.

Dr Zandman from Vishay was a well deserved lifetime achievement winner with a past that you could never image…escaping at a young age from being executed by the Nazis by hiding under someones home for 18 months in “grave as he called it with 7 others”.  He had everyone spellbound with his remarks.

And Avnet’s Phil Gallagher was also honored for his NEDA efforts. He is one of the good guys.

All in all good to see so many nice hard working folks smiling…alot of work ahead but but NEDA members will grind it out.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS