> Dick Neumann Named Recipient of the 2024 ERA Lifetime Achievement Award
The Electronics Representatives Association (ERA) is pleased and honored to announce that Dick Neumann, former vice president at Grayhill, Inc., has been named the 2024 recipient of the ERA Lifetime Achievement Award.
The award will be presented to Neumann at February’s ERA Conference in Austin, Texas, in recognition of his service to the electronics industry.
The Lifetime Achievement Award was created to recognize individuals who play an integral role in supporting the manufacturers’ representative model in the electronics industry.
Neumann retired from Grayhill, Inc. in August 2022 after 47 years of service to the company.
After graduating from TCU in 1962, he started working at Grigsby as a purchasing agent. From there, he joined the sales rep firm Hill Gray, where he was first introduced to Grayhill products. Dick was recruited to Grayhill in 1976 as the western regional sales manager. Over his career in sales, he held the roles of national sales manager, vice president of sales and marketing and vice president of special projects.
“Dick started his career as a manufacturers’ rep at Hill Gray,” said Walter Tobin, CEO of ERA. “That’s where his passion and commitment to the rep function started and was carried over once he joined Grayhill. Dick’s 40-plus year career with Grayhill was a testament to his ability to manage and motivate his rep network by creating an atmosphere of collaboration, hard work and a bit of fun. His dedication to family, Grayhill and our industry is what drove Dick right up to his retirement. He has been a mentor to so many of us. ERA is proud to recognize Dick with this Lifetime Achievement Award.”
“It’s a special time in one’s life when he receives a special award for doing what he loves,” said Neumann. “For the last 50 years, ERA has helped me build relationships with our representatives, with other manufacturers and with distributors. It has been said that a successful man learns from his mistakes. These relationships helped me not only learn from my mistakes but also from my peers’ mistakes. Tim Coakley once told me if he took one idea home from an ERA conference, it was a successful conference. I know I have taken more knowledge from my peers than I have given. I have many people to thank from the more than 59 years in the industry that I love.”
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October 2023 dipped slightly when compared to September 2022 POS. October is tracking about 4.2 percent below the average for 2023 and running about 4 percent behind 2022 POS numbers. Most of the 150+ companies that we include in our POS Index are running slightly below their 2022 numbers. The industry is beginning to feel a definite slowdown; the last two months should help to provide a good indication of what 2024 will be like.
> The 2024 ERA Conference Committee is excited to announce that Andrew Busch and Cam Marston will present as General Session speakers at the sold-out 
> The Representor editorial staff is now accepting 
> With profound sadness, ERA must announce the passing of Chuck Tanzola, CPMR, ERA Board President, and vice president at Fusion Sourcing Group. Chuck served ERA and the industry faithfully and selflessly for many years. He served the past two terms as Chairman of the Board and Board President. ERA knew Chuck as a voice of calm and reason who governed ERA as a thoughtful, fair and sensitive leader. His presence will be greatly missed. 
> The ERA White Pin Internship program is now 
> If you did not have the chance to attend the live STEP 2023 event, but still want to access the event’s valuable educational content, the 
> IMPORTANT 
The Electronics Representatives Association announces the latest graduates of its 2023 Chapter Officer Leadership Training (
> COLT — ERA’s live, virtual chapter officer leadership training program — will take place Nov. 1-3, and registration will end tomorrow, October 25! Chapter officers, or those interested in pursuing a chapter leader role, are encouraged to attend and gain creative ideas and practical knowledge about increasing member engagement and excitement in their local ERA chapter. 
> 2024 ERA Conference registration is at 85 percent capacity for attendees! Want to secure your seat at the most popular industry event, and have the opportunity to network with more than 600 rep, manufacturer and distributor leaders? Do not wait. 
> The hurrier I go – the behinder I get!
EXECUTIVE COMMENTARY
Walter Tobin, ERA CEO
by Walter E. Tobin, ERA CEO
This time a year ago, many of us were asking our partners (and were also asked by them), “How’s business?”
We then may have listed a litany of challenges that we were dealing with: long and uncertain lead times, unclear/inaccurate forecasts from our customers and being asked to adhere to and/or pass along NCNR clauses that had never seen before. There were shipping issues, port backups, the Great Resignation phenomenon, work-from-home issues, the search for the “golden screw”— so many things for us to consider and manage every day.
Yet, when a follow-up question was asked or we asked, “How’s your revenue this year?” we often said or heard, “We are having a record year!”
How was that even possible? I guess there must have been some product somewhere that was able to be shipped and billed to someone.
Was all of this product really needed? We have now become aware that there was a lot of double/triple ordering done to hedge our bets on averting product shortages. We may have agreed to NCNR clauses that we would have never even considered to agree to in the past, all while hoping that our own “golden screws” arrived on our docks.
So here we are a year later. Lead times have returned to a more normal cadence and many golden screws have been received. The NCNR clauses that we agreed to are now being enforced, all leading to a period of declining bookings with book-to-bill ratios falling below 1:1. We are now relying on our past order backlog to sustain us.
Bookings down, billings falling, inventory rising…yikes! What are we do to now? Some companies have adopted a “damn the torpedoes: full speed ahead” policy: cancel open orders, refuse shipments on past orders placed and accepted in good faith, renege on NCNR orders and begin to sell excess inventory on the open/gray market. This is all to achieve some short-term relief and to try to maximize their own quarterly/annual financials. Some of these tactics are working!
Some companies are demanding lower prices due to the return of a “buyer’s market” and to take advantage of companies who are now swimming (drowning?) in inventory. These companies are under pressure to reduce their own inventories and sell at reduced prices that will then lead to their own lower margins, which will then wreak havoc on their own financials.
In addition when companies sell their excess inventory to the gray market, it sits out there only to be sold down the road to customers who may take advantage of lower prices who may have bought this product from the authorized manufacturer/distributor channel who were relying on new orders down the road to help them sell their inventory. This excess inventory sits out there and then is sold down the road at lower prices —another short-term action that has longer-term ramifications on our supply chain.
When COVID-19 hit and the supply chain “broke,” why did it break? Because no one had any “upside” inventory to support the need for unforecasted demand inside of lead time. Customers were clamoring for manufacturers to simply “turn on” or build factories to support this unforecasted demand and many were asking as to why the distributors did not have more product on their shelves.
We will never learn, will we? But here we are again, looking to take margin away from the company to our left and right in the supply chain and to demand lower prices which then limits their ability to fund unforecasted inventory in the supply chain.
We need to try to take the long-term approach. It doesn’t help that Wall Street forces public companies to look at business on a 90-day horizon which forces public companies to do the yin and yang every 90 days. Wall Street also forces our publicly traded suppliers and channel partners to fight each other while customers are looking to us to right the ship, all while demanding lower prices.
A new and perhaps naive approach is for each one of us to ask the company above and below us in the supply chain for their help and guidance on preventing the supply chain disaster of the COVID-19 period from happening again. Ask, “What do you need from us?” Perhaps allow them to make a bit more margin on our business to then help fund new factories, unforecasted demand and shorter lead times. Build a true partnership based on mutual respect and trust, and not just on price alone.
Try it on one of your supply chain partnerships and see what they say. What harm can it do? You may end up positioning your company ahead of the rest of your competitors when times get tough again. It’s worth a try!
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