The convenience industry is in the midst of significant change. With e-tailers offering just-in-time delivery, endless choice and competitive pricing—that consumers can access from the comfort of home—why should anyone visit your stores? It’s a question that, in the face of lackluster margins and declining trips, retail leaders are asking themselves. The answer lies in exploring the boundaries of the physical store itself. Getting the answer right, and evolving the physical space accordingly, is key to survival in the bricks and mortar retail world.
Convenience retailing is going through an accelerated metamorphosis. Retailers have to turn themselves into destinations (and exciting ones at that), that provide speed, selection and a customized shopping experience. The physical store itself will have to get smarter at figuring out what customers want, providing a frictionless and memorable experience.
Embarking on this metamorphosis brings with it painful challenges and difficult decisions. Along with the executive peer networking that is a hallmark of the Leadership Forum, our 2019 event will help you navigate this disruption. Speakers at NACS Leadership Forum will reveal the decisions they are making, and the strategic and operational implications these decisions imply.
If you would like to receive an invitation for this year’s event, visit our registration tab for more information.
The NACS Leadership Forum is a world-class event that brings together established leaders from the convenience and fuel retailing industry to explore high-impact and meaningful approaches to business in a dynamic setting.
Below is the draft schedule for the 2019 Leadership Forum. Exact times of sessions may vary slightly and will be updated as content is confirmed.
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11:00 am – 5:00 pm
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Registration Opens
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1:00 pm – 4:55 pm
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Top-to-Top Business Appointments (by invitation only)
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3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
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Afternoon Networking
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5:00pm – 6:30pm
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General Session
The Cost of Growth
In the century-long history of the industry, the cost of growing a firm’s store count has never been higher. Whether through acquisition, construction of new-to-industry stores, or remodeling existing stores, retail operators are finding opportunity around every corner. Moderated by NACS President and CEO Henry Armour, this panel discussion will explore the cost of growing your business in this current climate. We will talk with retailers who have embraced different philosophies of growth: those who have acquired to achieve company growth, those who have been acquired and those who have grown organically on their own.
Moderator: Henry O. Armour, President and CEO, NACS
Panelists:
- Sonja Hubbard, former Chief Executive Officer and President of E-Z MART, Inc.
- Ari Haseotes, CEO, Cumberland Farms
- Glenn Plumby, Senior Vice President and COO, Speedway LLC
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6:30 pm – 7:30 pm
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Welcome Reception
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Evening
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Supplier-Hosted Dinners (by invitation only)
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8:00 am – 5:00 pm
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Registration Open
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8:15 am – 9:00 am
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Networking Breakfast
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9:00 am – 10:15 am
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General Session
Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane
The Internet and smartphones are the latest in a 250-year-long cycle of disruption that has continuously changed the way we live, work and interact. The coming Augmented Age, however, promises a level of disruption, behavioral shifts and changes that are unparalleled. Futurist Brett King will talk about what this Augmented Age bring: Will robots take our jobs, and AI’s subsume us as inferior intelligences, or will this new age usher in a time of great abundance? How will our lives—and the lives of our consumers—be affected? The world will change more in the next 20 years than it has in the last 250 years. Are you and your companies ready to adapt? If history proves anything, you don't have much of a choice.
Speaker: Brett King, futurist; CEO of Moven; author and radio host
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10:15 am – 10:45 am
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Networking Break
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10:45 am – 12:00 pm
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General Session
The Customer Journey (Breakout)
The sky’s the limit as futurist Brett King takes you on a customer journey. Experience design without constraints as you look three-plus years into the future of your business to generate scenarios that will uncover new opportunities. This interactive session will bring clarity to an uncertain future.
Moderator: Brett King, futurist; CEO of Moven; author and radio host
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12:00 pm – 1:15 pm
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Lunch
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1:15 pm – 2:30 pm
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General Session
The Once and Future Worker
Our country faces a skills gap. For some, the fault lies with a tight labor market—we can't find the people. Speaker Oren Cass posits that we’re talking about the skills gap in the wrong way. The reality is that there are no more workers than the ones we have; you’ll need to learn how to run your business with the existing workforce. As a result, it’s incumbent on business to train and develop the existing workforce to be what we need—either by engaging the people inside your company or getting involved further upstream in the education system. An untrained workforce has now become your problem and part of your business mandate. Cass also looks at the future of work and automation. Unique technology is out there, but its deployment will be constrained by the people using it. The challenge is finding workers with both the functional skills you need and the ability to work with technology. The rate of change will be slower as a result, and at a pace less disruptive than anticipated, but the path to success is through discovering how to attract and prepare the workforce.
Speaker: Oren Cass, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and author of The Once and Future Worker
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2:30 pm – 3:30 pm
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Afternoon Networking
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3:30 pm – 5:25 pm
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Top-to-Top Business Appointments (by invitation only)
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6:30 pm – 9:30 pm
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NACS Reception & Dinner
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9:30 pm – 10:30 pm
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NACS After-Dinner Cocktails
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8:00 am – 11:00 am
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NACS Hospitality Lounge Open
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8:15 am – 9:00 am
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Networking Breakfast
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9:00 am – 11:00 am
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Closing Session
Strategic Agility: How to Build Adaptablity into Decision-Making
After glimpsing our disruptive future during the previous day’s session about the Augmented Age, Dr. Kathy Pearson will help you develop a strategy and mindset for navigating and managing uncertainty. You’ll discover a framework for balancing short-term versus long-term objectives during this engaging session. Pearson will help you identify barriers to agility as well as help you discover actions for strategic agility by identifying knowns and key uncertainties and by dynamically monitoring the external environment. You will learn how to build culture of agility and how to evaluate future forces in developing a three- to five-year plan for survival.
Speaker: Kathy Pearson, PhD, President and Founder of Enterprise Learning Solutions; Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics
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Interested in being invited? The NACS Leadership Forum is by invitation only, and predominantly top executives (CEOs, COOs and Vice Presidents) of successful convenience retailing companies operating 50+ stores. If you fit these criteria and would like to be considered during the selection process, please sign up below.
The Leadership Forum is an exclusive event made available to our Hunter Club supplier members. Hunter Club Gold members are eligible to register up to four (4) company representatives, Hunter Club Silver two (2) and Hunter Club Bronze one (1). The registration fee for Hunter Club members is $6,000 per person. Additional Hunter Club company personnel over and above their allotment will be $7,500 per person. NACS reserves the right to limit the number of additional registrations in order to maintain an appropriate balance between retailers and suppliers.
Registration is open to non-Hunter Club companies based on availability, and they are limited to one (1) participant at $10,000.
Please contact Nat Keller for more information.
Show Bio
Henry Armour is the president and CEO of NACS. He grew up working in his family’s retail businesses, Armour Oil Company, rising to the position of vice president and COO in 1977. In 1980, he joined The Standard Oil Company of Ohio, where he served as manager of development strategies. He later founded West Star Corporation, which grew to include 59 NOW! convenience stores, truck stops and quick-service restaurants in the Pacific Northwest until he sold the company in 2004. In 1988, Armour founded Epoch Corporation, which operated retail enterprises in California.
He became president and CEO of NACS in July 2005, having also served as the association’s chairman in 2002 and 2003. Armour earned a BA in economics from Stanford University, an MSc in economics from the London School of Economics, and an MBA and PhD in economics from Stanford University.
Show Bio
Oren Cass is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and author of The Once and Future Worker. Cass worked previously as the domestic policy director for Senator Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, was a management consultant at Bain & Company, and an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Show Bio
Ari’s career with Cumberland Farms began in the marketing department in 2003. In 2005, he was appointed to the position of Vice President of Strategic Planning and Business Development in the company's finance department. In 2007, he was promoted to Vice President of Marketing and served in that position until his promotion to President and Chief Operating Officer in 2008. In 2013, Ari was promoted to President and Group Chief Operating Officer of the Cumberland Gulf Group of Companies. The following year he was named Chief Executive Officer. Ari is a member of the NACS Board of Directors, the NACS Executive Committee and the NACS Legislative Committee. Ari and his wife, Ashley, are the founders of One Mission, a childhood cancer foundation dedicated to enhancing the lives of pediatric cancer patients and their families.
Show Bio
Brett King is a futurist and speaker, an author, and a media personality who covers the future of business. He has appeared as a commentator on CNBC, BBC, ABC, Fox, Bloomberg and more. He advised the Obama administration on Fintech policy and the Future of banking and advises regulators and bank CEOs around the world on technology transformation. King hosts a radio show on FinTech called "Breaking Banks" (140 countries, 3.6 million listeners). He is the CEO and Founder of Moven, a successful mobile start-up, which has raised more than $24 million, with the world's first mobile, downloadable bank account. His latest book is Bank 4.0, and another one of his books, Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane, is an international bestseller.
Show Bio
Kathy Pearson, PhD, is a strategist, Systems Thinking expert, and authority in decision making. She is president and founder of ELS, a firm focused on executive development and learning across industries. Kathy is also a senior fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics and has served as an adjunct associate professor in the Operations and Information Management Department at The Wharton School, both at the University of Pennsylvania. Pearson’s work spans a wide variety of industries and geographies, and her client list includes organizations such as Cardinal Health, Children’s Miracle Network, Coca-Cola, Comcast, The Estee Lauder Companies, GlaxoSmithKline, India Ministry of Finance, Merck, Novartis, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Royal Bank of Scotland and the World Bank.
Show Bio
Plumby is senior vice president and chief operating officer of Speedway LLC. He serves on the board of governors for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, is a NACS board member and serves on the NACS Research Council, and he is a director of the Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce and a member of SIGMA. Plumby began his career with Marathon in 1981. He held various accounting and marketing positions until transferring to Emro Marketing Company, the predecessor of Speedway LLC, in 1994, where he served as pricing and light product acquisition director. He was appointed vice president of light product marketing in 1998, and later vice president of marketing in 2002. From 2010 through 2017, Plumby held various vice president/senior vice president responsibilities before being appointed to his current role in 2018.
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For Invited Retail Attendees: Hotel accommodations will be made by NACS as part of your registration process. Invited Retail Attendees will have their first night stay (Feb 12 or 13) covered directly by NACS as part of the registration. Additionally, they Invited Retail Attendees, who participate fully in the Leadership Forum events, may also apply for reimbursement of up to $350 for travel and lodging-related expenses.
Supplier Attendees: Supplier attendance is limited to Hunter Club Member companies. For more information on how to participate please contact Nat Keller, nkeller@convenience.org
Nearby Airports: Ground Transportation to and from the NACS Leadership Forum is on own.
Miami International Airport (MIA) 11 Miles, 20 minutes
Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLL) 25 Miles, 45 Minutes