I believe that companies should join their trade association because there are clear advantages in membership, and it is up to trade association executives like myself to demonstrate these. Gone are the days when trade associations could get away with merely providing an annual golf tournament and social events!

Getting to know the members

The first thing I felt I had to do was to get to know our members. Thus I undertook what in our office became known as the 'grand tour'. I have managed to meet with most of our members in their own offices and assembly plants. This has helped me enormously in understanding the operations of AMDEA member companies and the ways in which AMDEA can help them.

During the course of the year we welcomed three new members, which takes AMDEA membership to twenty eight. We can certainly claim to represent almost all of the UK domestic appliance manufactures.

One of the conclusions I reached as a result of my meetings was that AMDEA needed to improve its communications both with other organisations and with its own members. So I have started a 'contact programme' to meet with politicians, civil servants and representatives of relevant trade associations. Needless to say, this programme is strongly focused on our retail partners in retra and the British Retail Consortium (BRC).

At the same time I appointed our 'association executive' to help improve our links with our members. We are thus better able to provide information and respond to enquiries.

Communications and networking

Since the start of 2007 we have produced a monthly newsletter report for our members as well as the 'circulars' – a series of reports on issues which AMDEA is currently dealing with.

In addition to this, we have continued to represent our industry at standard and technical meetings both in the UK and world-wide. We have also worked closely with our partners in Europe through CECED, our European trade association.

The agenda

During the course of 2007 we have dealt with a wide range of issues impacting on our industry, such as the WEEE Directive, energy labelling and many others. Some of them affected all of our members; others were more specific to particular products.
Considerable time and effort has been devoted to the 'Time to Change' campaign for the early replacement of older domestic appliances with new more efficient ones. Once again we worked closely with our retail partners in retra, with whom we produced material for use in-store.

I very much look forward to further co-operation with retailers in 2008. There are already signs that it will not be an easy year. The events of recent months in the financial sector may have an impact on consumer confidence and ultimately on the sales of our products. In such circumstances, there is always a temptation to cut costs, and trade associations are often in the line of fire when such decisions are made.

Nevertheless, the valuable work which we do must go on. Certainly in AMDEA we enter 2008 with confidence, and a desire to continue to work closely with all of our partners in the supply chain.

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