Letter from the President
All SWA Membership,
I wanted to take a moment thank the SWA membership for allowing me to be this year’s SWA President!
The convention is quickly approaching! I personally would like to invite you to attend our 90th Annual Convention. The convention is being held at Hammock Beach Resort in Palm Coast, FL on June 24-26th. We are excited to celebrate our past presidents as a focal point of this convention. We have also secured Howard Putnam as our Keynote Speaker. “Howard Putnam’s ultimate objective is “bottom line improvement.” He believes that cultures that place “people” as their #1 priority have the greatest long-term impact and success.
He is the former CEO of the highly successful Southwest Airlines whose foundation and culture placed people first. Later, when recruited to be the CEO of failing Braniff International, Howard Putnam was the 1st CEO to successfully restructure a major airline into through, and out of Chapter 11. Earlier he spent over twenty years with United Airlines, his final position being Group VP of Marketing.” (taken from his online Bio)
In 2017 we had 714 people attend the convention. Those folks represented 175 companies, 355 delegates, 181 spouses and 129 kids. SWA has always taken pride in the family participation that attends our convention. If you are new to our association, please plan to attend and bring your family along! We do not charge extra for spouses or children. Allow our convention to help your business and a family vacation!
It is the participation of our SWA membership which creates our strength and our ability to make a positive impact on both our industry and our way of life in the distribution channel. Our strong attendance has created financial strength and stability for SWA which allows us to offer more opportunities for the membership to continue to gain value from our organization and the events we sponsor.
We will also have the Profit Enhancement Institute coming again in Spring. This has always been a great event and the members who have sent people have always raved about the information that their folks were presented with and how they can take ideas back that improve their businesses day to day!
Please use the SWA website to continue to check for upcoming regional events and opportunities to participate and become involved in your organization. It is our collective efforts and participation that will pave the way to a better future for all in our industry! Thanks so much for all that you, our membership, has done to make SWA such a valuable part of our distribution channel and it has been a pleasure to serve this great organization. I look forward to seeing you at an upcoming event soon!
David Popek
VAMAC
SWA President
