To save attendees time and money, the American Wholesale Marketers Association (AWMA), Fairfax, Va., is co-locating two recently launched meetings in 2013—the AWMA/C-Metrics Convenience Industry Outlook Forum and the AWMA/DEF Harmonizing Assortment program.

The Outlook Forum will take place June 24-25; the Harmonizing Assortment program will take place June 25-27. Both meetings will be held at the Loews New Orleans Hotel in New Orleans.

“We recognized a lot of overlap in the attendance at these two meetings, both of which were launched in 2012,” says AWMA President Scott Ramminger. “By holding them back-to-back in the same hotel in New Orleans, we are able to get a great rate from the hotel. We can also save attendees who want to go to both meetings time and travel costs.

“There is a synergistic aspect to the meetings. The Outlook Forum is obviously all about convenience industry sales data. The Harmonizing Assortment program takes data as a foundation and talks about how distributors can take action on it to improve profits for themselves and their retailers. It makes sense to attend both meetings, but regardless of whether attendees choose one or both, they will benefit from the cost savings we get from the hotel by co-locating the events.”

At the C-Metrics Outlook Forum, the latest industrywide sales information will be presented as developed through AWMA InfoMetrics and projected to the universe of 146,000 convenience stores nationwide via C-Metrics.

At Harmonizing Assortment, industry consultants will guide attendees through the process of using the data to create the best possible category management strategies for retailer customers.

For more information about the conferences, visit www.awmanet.org or www.awmashow.com.