My nam
e is Amanda Capron. I am president of the Retail Leadership Society at Northwest Arkansas Community College. I am here blogging for you today thanks to a wonderful staff and program at the college. I am a Retail Management major and have been given the great opportunity to come to NYC for the National Retail Federation Conference thanks to NWACC. This college has given me so many great opportunities to develop my skills and advance my career with my knowledge and now this amazing trip. Thank You to everyone at the college who made this possible. Also, thank you to the National Retail Federation Foundation for allowing me this great opportunity to tell my story.
January 10, 2009 – Day 1
I woke up excited to start traveling. This was only my second time flying and while I was a bit nervous about it I couldn’t wait to get to NY!!! I met Kelley, faculty adviser for RLS, at the XNA airport and we went straight to check in. I thought that it would all be standard procedure, but I was wrong. When we got up to security I found out that my ticket had been randomly selected for additional security checks. I am so lucky! They pulled me off to the side and gave me a friendly pat down and bag search. How embarrassing, really, the officer even commented on the nice shade of red my face had turned. Don’t worry my fun didn’t stop there. We then flew into Atlanta, GA where the weather was 60 degrees. Too bad it was raining and our flight got delayed an hour. I can’t complain too much though because the two flights before us and the two flights after us got canceled. So, I said goodbye to warm weather and left for NY. We flew into Newark, NJ where it was snowing of course. I didn’t care though I was getting ready to hop a cab for NY. My first time ever to NY! I couldn’t help thinking of all the things I wanted to see and do while I was there. I even asked the taxi driver to make sure and let me know as soon as we crossed over from Jersey to NY. He laughed a little, but was nice enough to point out an amazing view of the city. Finally after what felt like forever in the cab (really only like 15 minut
es) we made it to our hotel. I was too excited to go to sleep so Kelley and I decided to take a walk. Two blocks in and we turned the corner right onto Times Square! My head was completely swimming. Billboards painted the sky with neon lights. People were everywhere. Every time I turned around there was something new grabbing my attention. I was like a kid in a candy store pointing out everything I saw. The 2009 New Years Eve ball, Hard Rock Café, Plant Hollywood, I even started pointing out all of the people selling stuff on the street. I couldn’t have imagined anything like this in a million years. No amount of TV had prepared me for what I was experiencing. Several hours later and many, many pictures later we walked back to the hotel so we could get some sleep and start our conference the next morning.
January 11, 2009 – Day 2
6:50 am the alarm clock started going off in my ear (note to self: I really need to find a less annoying tune to wake up to). Time to get up already, I felt like I had just gone to bed. I was ready to start the day though. I wasn’t sure what to expect at the conference, all I knew was that I was excited to go. In Arkansas all of our meetings are in auditoriums and hotel ballrooms. This was definitely not an auditorium. We shuttled to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and I was completely amazed at how beautiful this building was and how long (note to self: find more comfortable heels to walk in). We arrived early to make sure that we could get a good seat to see Daniel Moe speak on at the session, Are You Truly a Customer-Centric Retailer? Daniel is on our Retail Advisory Committee at NWACC and I was anxious to hear him speak. It was great to learn more on this topic, but I have to tell you my favorite part was when Daniel showed us the Best Buy commercials from years past and today. It is really amazing to look back and see how marketing strategies have changed. I also had the opportunity to attend a session on The Global Powers of Retailing 2009. About 15 minutes into this one I was thinking how grateful I was that I had already taken an Economics class. My final session for the day was Holistic Approaches to “Green” Retail Strategies. I always love to hear topics on the environment and sustainability discussed, but I was particularly intrigued by this one, mostly because I have an ex-boss that uses the word holistically all the time, but also because I got to listen to the story of Half Priced Books and how it was founded. All in all I would say day one at the conference was a success my head was full of new knowledge and my red bag they gave me was full of more reading material.
After the conference we rushed back to the hotel so that we could get in some more site seeing. Our first stop was the TKTS booth in Times Square for some half-price tickets to my very first Broadway Musical. The line wasn’t very long, but I went ahead and let Kelley get the tickets while I found some strangers to talk to. Just kidding, they weren’t really that strange. Some of the guys handing out fliers were nice of enough to tell me where to find some odd locations that I wanted to check out while in NY. One of them even knew where Sarah Jessica Parker lived, but not having a clue where I was I knew that I would never find where she was. So I gave up that mission and we headed to the Empire State Building. What a view! I can’t even describe what I could see from 86 stories up. It was absolutely breathe taking and well worth the cramped ride in the elevator to see. Back down to solid ground and off to our Broadway Musical. Since we has a little time left before it started I decided that I had better try a little more NY culture and had me a “dog” with kraut and mustard. I’ve got to tell you it really just tasted like a hotdog with kraut and mustard. A little dis
appointing, but the musical was not… We walked into to a gorgeous room with balconies and box seating. The walls had pillars with ram’s head carved into them. It was amazing, my bottle of water was even lined with gold, well it should have been it cost $4. Anyhow, I laughed, I clapped, I even sang along. Mamma Mia was a hit! I loved every minute of it. I have never had an experience like that and I am so glad I got to go. We finished up the evening at the Hard Rock Café for some supper. Very awesome place, I even had Ringo’s drums sitting on the wall behind me. Day 2 in NY was great, a day of learning and an evening of memories.
January 12, 2009 – Day 3
Up bright and early again today after a long night, but well worth it. The conference kicked off today with Lee Scott speaking. I have heard Lee speak on several occasions, but this was a great experience for me to see him speak in this kind of environment. Everyone was hanging on every word he said, including me. He is such a powerful speaker. Also in the Super Sessions we had Weathering Retail’s Storms: How to Navigate in a Turbulent Economy. It was lunch time after the two sessions and Kelley and I decided to do a little exploring. I was on a mission to have a slice of NY style pizza. First we headed to Central Park for a short carriage. The view is beautiful. There were several people skating at the rink, the carousel, and I even got to see the bridge where the filmed part of Home Alone 2. Anyhow, back to the pizza. Our cab driver told us about the famous John’s pizza so we head st
raight there. I was a little disappointed when I got there to find out that they didn’t serve pizza by the slice, but when they brought out our “pie” I could have ate the whole thing. Now that is some good pizza. Feeling very full we went back to the conference where we met up with Daniel Moe. I also attended Financial Business Case for Improving Supply Chain Efficiencies. I am going to be taking supply chain soon so this was a great insight to what I have coming up. The speaker was Kyle McIntosh from Patagonia. I love their website and the story of their supply chain. I recommend everyone checking it out. After the conferences for the day we headed back out for some more adventures. Completely exhausted at this point we made it a quick adventure though. Since our hotel was close we walked down to Grand Central Station to get on the nearby subway. This was my first time on a subway. If you have ever thought reading a map was hard be glad you have never had to figure out what subway you were suppose to get on. Geesh ! I was a bit confused to say the least, but we did arrive at our destination in China Town. Now I have to tell you I was asked by several people to come back with them I love NY tshirts and I finally found some that were good quality in China Town. So I went ahead and bought 5 for $10 and was glad I did my friends loved them. We of course ate some great Chinese food while there and crossed over briefly in to Little Italy. We were going to go to SOHO, but were way too tired and went back to the hotel for some rest.
January 13, 2009 – Day 4
Getting some sleep sure was nice. I feel excited to start the day off. We went to a great conference on The Sky Has Fallen: Now What? It was held with a panel of experts which discussed the economy. The entire NRF conferences have been great in recognizing the struggling economic times we are in. It’s been such a great learning experience to hear what Retailers are doing to pave their way in the future through this turbulence. I also made it to Rising Stars: Succession Planning that Builds Future Retail Leaders and took some time to go through the Value Expo and the Convention Expo. I loved to see what is out in the market now and what some upcoming trends might be. The final session I went to for the day was my favorite throughout the whole conference. VIRC is the New BRIC: Emerging Markets. Learning about what is being seen as new upcoming markets was one of the best learning experiences I had. The presenter was very knowledgeable and the entire presentation was so well prepared. The entire audience was participating by asking questions and sharing their stories. It was very inspiring. We had only grabbed a quick bite to eat at the conference since we were so busy there today so we decided to go somewhere nice for dinner. When we got back to the hotel I asked the lady at the front desk if she could recommend somewhere nice where I might run into “someone famous”. She recommended a destination and off to the subway we went, well there was the quic
k detour to Rockefeller Center first. I loved getting to see the skaters and people all watching them. I didn’t feel like the only tourist in NY while I was there. It was fun, but let me tell you what; don’t go to the Village for someplace to run into famous people. I thought at first we had gotten lost or maybe didn’t take the right subway stop, but we ask a police officer and a cab driver who both confirmed that we were in the village, but they didn’t know off anywhere nice for us to go eat. After wandering the streets (note to self – probably not my best idea) we grabbed a cab and headed off to the Shark Bar in Manhattan. Much better. The food was great but I am going to give you all a tip… I am a southern gal and I love sweet tea. This restaurant had more of a home-style cooking style to it so I though, okay I will give the tea a shot. It was great! It was so great that I had 3 glasses of it. It was not $9 great. Seriously… they charged me $3 per glass, no free refills. I was shocked, but couldn’t give it back at that point. I needed to do some more souvenir shopping, couldn’t leave NY without getting a present for my mom, so we ran back down to Time Square and I found a couple of things I couldn’t live without, of course, and then headed back to start packing.
January 14, 2009 – Day 5
I woke up feeling sad. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to NY. I knew in a few short hours though I would have to leave so I went ahead and finished packing up my belongings. After we both got ready we went ahead on the conference. What an inspirational closing day. I went to Harvesting the Low Hanging Green Fruit and The Digital Channel: Retail’s new growth engine. This was another great session. We talked about Boarder’s website. Much like Patagonia I was impressed by Boarder’s website. There is a lot of innovation on Boarder’s website and you can tell they are a company that is truly listening to what their customer is saying. We also went to the super session Inspirational Leadership: What Differentiates Great Companies and Why. We had to head right back to the hotel after that to change and get our stuff 
locked up until it was time to go to the airport. With just a little time left we went to the Guggenheim. I never thought in a million years that I would ever get to see an actual Picasso, but I did and it was breathe-taking. My best friend was an art major so I have always had an appreciation thanks to her and I really wished at that moment she could have been there. They were doing a lot of remodeling, but I still loved everything that I did get to see. We had to start towards the airport at this point, but we needed to get some stamps so that we could mail out our postcards and have them stamped NY. The cab driver couldn’t tell us where the Post Office was, but luckily there was one only a few blocks from the hotel so we mailed out our post cards then off to the airport.
I guess all of the reading material I was taking back with me weighed too much because my luggage was overweight. I dug it all out though and found room in Kelley’s carry on to store it. After that was all over we headed down to security where, you guessed it, I got selected for additional security checks again. At least I wasn’t alone this time because Kelley got the joy of the pat down too. Hey, at least the planes were all on time and our luggage was in Arkansas when we got back.
What a great time and what wonderful memories I have created. Learning and site seeing, I will not soon forget my first time in NY.
