Lead photo: City Electric Supply Co-CEO John Gray chats with a fellow employee during CES Connect’s “Counter Day” on June 29 in Nashville, TN. (CES Photo)
I was happy to be invited to and attend City Electric Supply’s (CES) marquee biennial event, CES Connect — held June 27-30 at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville, TN.
Dallas, TX-based CES is a family-owned electrical wholesale distributor that has over 700 branches and more than 5,000 associates in North America, along with 2,785 vehicles across 30 U.S. states. The company established its first U.S. branch in 1983 in Tampa, FL, and has seen rapid nationwide expansion in the 41 years since.
Connect serves as the company’s conference that has likewise grown tremendously since its 2014 inception, going from 750+ attendees two years later, to 1,200 in 2018 and surging to over 2,000 professionals and 60 vendor partners in the fifth edition in 2024. The event rebranded in 2022 from what was known as the company’s North America Managers’ Conference.
The purpose of CES Connect 2024 was two-fold:
- Be a resource event for CES staff: Through various speaker sessions and networking events, it provided a great opportunity for its employees to learn more about what the company is up to and where it’s headed, including engaging with its leadership team. During Connect’s ‘Counter Day’ on June 29, attendees could meander to and from what was set up as “CES Connectville” which included a mock branch and makeshift buildings that housed different company departments.
- A platform for vendor partners: CES Connect’s Counter Day provided a great opportunity for key CES suppliers to showcase their latest and greatest offerings across products, services and software catering predominantly to a customer base of electrical contractors. The latest product innovations in wire & cable, lighting, charging, hand tools, metering, testing and more were prominently displayed and demonstrated.
I’ve attended a handful of company conferences over the years, but I found CES Connect to be unique in how it served as a resource event for its branch network while platforming the suppliers it invited to exhibit — and more toward the former.
“It’s very much internal,” CES Co-CEO Andrew Dawes told me during the event’s “Counter Day” on June 29. “We have some customers here and some VIPs, but it’s really a show for connecting our staff with each other, our key vendors and our supporting departments. As we get bigger and bigger, communication is always a bit of a fear, right? We need to be able to talk and make sure our team is informed. It’s very informative, it’s a celebration and we want to show them the capabilities of our company.”
Dawes has been with CES since 1992 and became Co-CEO this past September alongside fellow company veteran John Gray, who started with the company in 1986 in England.
Along with those two, I was able to chat with numerous CES department leaders across branch operations, HR, accounting, value-added services, marketing and more by visiting their respective stations on the Counter Day floor. I found that the setup must have been particularly valuable for anyone running one of CES’ 630 branches to find ways to optimize that branch’s performance.
One feature of CES Connect’s Counter Day I found particularly interesting was the meet & greet sessions it had throughout the day with CES executives and other senior leaders at the event’s “Influencer Bar”. This was an innovative opportunity for employees to speak directly with the company’s top decision-makers in an informal setting. All attendees had to do was queue for a chat at the wraparound bar-like setup in the middle of the expo floor. CES execs available for those conversations included Dawes, Gray, Executive Chairman Thomas Hartland-Mackie, Global CEO Jeremy Saunders, CFO Phil Flaherty and more.
Here’s a few sights and sounds I captured during CES Connect 2024:
Other Connect highlights included:
- A mainstage session where executives addressed the current and future state of CES
- A mainstage session where CES’ senior leadership team shared their vision and strategies for fostering a culture of appreciation and innovation, along with enhancements to associate recognition, and the evolution of new business services
- A Fireside Chat with Dawes, Gray, Hartland-Mackie and Saunders
- An Awards Dinner, presented Country Music Awards-style that honored the company’s top new branch; most improved branch; top districts; top branches in Canada; top branches in North America and more
- An exclusive show at the Grand Ole Opry
Event Gamification for Good
CES effectively gamified CES Connect by having an interactive points system in which attendees could accrue points throughout the event that they could use to bid on raffle prizes.
A big way to earn points was by scanning a physical QR code at each of the some 60 VIP vendor booths at the event’s counter day. The more vendors you scanned, the more points you earned.
In addition, CES encouraged everyone to get their steps in by allowing them to accrue a point for every two steps taken if they connected the app to a fitness tracker. The event also encouraged this with a scavenger hunt for QR codes throughout one of the cavernous atriums at the Gaylord.
All-in-all, it was a fun way to get people moving, and it went toward a great cause, as the CES donated $1 to the Make-A-Wish Foundation for every 1,000 steps taken collectively. Connect ended with over 40 million steps taken, good enough for a $40,000+ donation.
Many industry event apps have a point system that encourages active engagement on the app, but I thought CES Connect effectively leveraged what is typically attendees’ biggest motivation to earn prizes. Knowing that the more booth visits you made, the more steps you took and the more in-app activity you had gave you a better chance at winning physical prizes was a fun experience part of the overall event.
More to Come
My many thanks to CES for the invite and its hospitality during the event. It was great to learn much more about a company that, despite its scale, may be flying under the radar for those outside of the electrical supply sector.
Stay tuned for more MDM coverage out of my experience at City Electric Supply’s 2024 CES Connect event, which featured an exclusive sit-down interview with Dawes and Gray.
